... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life.

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.

When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself

Then our crime's worse than a murderer's. His act puts him outside the law, but keeps the law intact. Ours would weaken the law.

Mr. Gilbert had the earnest mania for self-improvement which has blighted the lives of so many young men.

If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from its owner.

The more we try to improve our schools, the heavier the teaching task becomes; and the better our teaching methods the more difficult they are to apply.

Just when I thought my day couldnt get any worse, I saw the dead guy next to my locker.

Today's population of adolescents and young adults is the largest in our nation's history.

If you look at [Donald] Trump's attacks on Jeb Bush, they've been pretty devastating.

Remember this-you can't serve God and Money, but you can serve God with money.