I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.

She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.

Most of us come to the church by a means the church does not allow.

Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.

Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.

Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics.