I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.

I don’t want any of this artificial superficial feeling stimulated by the choir. Today I have proved myself a glutton—​for Scotch oatmeal cookies and erotic thought. There is nothing left to say of me.

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

He knew something was going to happen and his entire system was waiting on it. He thought it was going to be one of the supreme moments in life but apart from that, he didn't have the vaguest notion what it might be. He pictured himself, after it was over, as an entirely new man, with an even better personality than he had now. He sat there for about fifteen minutes and nothing happened.

I do not like the raw sound of the human voice in unison unless it is under the discipline of music.

When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.