Purity strikes me as the most mysterious of the virtues and the more I think about it the less I know about it.

Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.

I am very handy with my advice and then when anybody appears to be following it, I get frantic.

The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence.

There are some of us who have to pay for our faith every step of the way and who have to work out dramatically what it would be like without it and if being without it would be ultimately possible or not.

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.

I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.