The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence.
The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.
Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.
It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.
I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.
All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.
It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes.
I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.
I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.
I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.
Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.
Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
Conviction without experience makes for harshness.
At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.