In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.

What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.

For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man...Some day a man will walk into my office as a ghost or beast or ghost-beast and walk out as a man, which is to say sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher.

In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.

Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature?

Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat.

Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.