Good and evil appear to be joined in every culture at the spine.

I am a Catholic not like someone else would be a Baptist or a Methodist, but like someone else would be an atheist.

If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.

In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil. I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow.

The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.

I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.