Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.

You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.

You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

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.

...you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.

What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

[To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth

I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

There's just some magic in truth and honesty and openness.

I think [Anderson Cooper ] and me both enjoy working, and don't consider it "work," so as long as I'm having fun I will continue at this pace.

The world has plenty of room, riches, money and beauty ... Let us begin by dividing it more fairly.

You can't write about things without doing them. You just have to live that same way.

People is themselves when they are children, and not again till they know they'm dying.

The process of writing is a process of learning; and much has become clearer to me in the attempt to transform my original rough notes into what I hope is an intelligible presentation.

Cotton Owens was leading and daddy was second. They came up on me and I moved over to let them pass. Cotton went on, but daddy bumped me in the rear and my car went right into the wall.

There's a saying - "Write what you know." It's bad advice if you take it as an unbreakable rule, but good advice if you use it as a foundation.

I never understood the point of juicing - I always thought I could get enough nutrients from eating fruit and vegetables - but now I'm a convert.

The best cure for racism is to have somebody shoot at you. Man, it does not matter then what color the arse is that comes to save yours-black or white, you're ready to give it a big fat kiss.