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.

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.

[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.

I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear.

Sometimes you have to grow up before you appreciate how you grew up.

I think dressing nowadays went from trying to fit in to wearing something to try to stick out.

The idea of a poem as a message in a bottle means that it's sent out towards some future reader and the reader who opens that bottle becomes the addressee of the literary text.

All good plots come from well-orchestrated characters pitted against one another in a conflict of wills.

I've found constancy and balance between creativity and normality.

A true leader doesn't just bring troubles; but bring solutions.

Cajun is country food by farmers and fisherman that arrived in Louisiana from Acadiana, Canada.

I have to reinvent myself.

He moved on, in the centre of a widening circle. He wasn't an enemy, he was a nemesis.

Success is less interesting than struggle. There is great pleasure in the effort.