If there is no possibility for change in a character, we have no interest in him.

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.

Tonight is the night of telling our stories. You tell three and I four.

It's not worthy o human beings to give up.

I feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere, so we will patiently grope round for it.

Memory - the very skin of life.

There's two sides to the coin. I think I'm much happier that [Barack] Obama won over John McCain or Mitt Romney, because I think Obama did something culturally for the country.

"On my honor" - what an ennobling phrase! Three short words, nine letters, but the summation of all we call character. From the Boy Scout's Oath.

Even in my bravest moment, I am a coward.

Dramatic things always have a bitterness for some one.

Most small-business owners will tell you they don't want Obama 'boosting' them. They just want him to get out of the way.

I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.