It is always difficult to get across to people who are not professional writers that a talent to write does not mean a talent to write anything at all.

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.

There can never be equality, so long the heavens have decided together with the darkness in the heart of men, such idealistic desire will never come to fruition.

I have never seen a newspaper headline where those in spirit, without physical bodies, carried out evil deeds like a mugger in a parking lot.

The beauty of progress is that it never fails to add a new positive meaning to one's life.

And the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

It's your money. You paid for it.

I don't think people should try to force their will on their family.

I look for places like me: big, hollow, forgotten by most everyone.

Semper Dowland semper dolens.

Coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities.

Doing the right thing is fun. If nothing else, it surprises people.