I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

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.

The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.

...it's not the stories - it's the pain and the joy and the people who stay with you long after the stories are told ...

One of these days I'm gonna beat him in the face with the butt of my service revolver until an eyeball pops out. These are the thoughts that keep me happy.

The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.

You search endlessly for permanent happiness in a world where nothing is permanent.

It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack.

The becoming still can never be the being still; only with the death of becoming is there being.

Once the light of our awareness is cast on any darkness, then it cannot hide and it cannot remain. Such is the law of consciousness.

What is most important is your Spirit. Why identify with anything else but your own spirit? You cannot get money out of it. No. The joy of Spirit is the reward of Spirit.

Seeing does not always believe.