Let's say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?

The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.

There are some times...when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.

The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with.

What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.