Novels must have verisimilitude, and truth has little enough of that.

Perfection irritates as well as it attracts, in fiction as in life.

We were not as rich as the Rockefellers or Mellons, but we were rich enough to know how rich they were.

To most readers the word 'fiction' is an utter fraud. They are entirely convinced that each character has an exact counterpart in real life and that any small discrepancy with that counterpart is a simple error on the author's part. Consequently, they are totally at a loss if anything essential is altered. Make Abraham Lincoln a dentist, put the Gettysburg Address on his tongue, and nobody will recognize it.

Buechner is a worthy member of the great prose stylists: Pascal, Newman, and Merton, who have harnessed their art to a passionate religious faith.

Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.

Frederick Buechner can find grace and redemption even in the shoddiest, phoniest aspects of a cultural wasteland. One reads Lion Country...with hope and delight.