Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.

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.

Life is easy if you let it and hard if you make it.

Such an error, one finds, to do things for the best. They usually seem to be such unpleasant things.

When you give politicians the power to do what you think is right you're automatically giving politicians the power to do what you think is wrong.

The best situation is where they cast you and then they trust you.

It is the considered opinion of most members of our rational élites that, in any given difference of opinion with reality, reality is wrong.

Habit is, of all the plants of human growth, the one that has the least need of nutritious soil in order to live, and is the first to appear on the most seemingly barren rock.

You have to take chances.

I'm gonna have to be killed before I lose, and I ain't going to die easy.

I could not understand why Meryl Streep, for example, is allowed to work while pregnant and I'm not.

I don't usually read reviews.