To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

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

When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville.

I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes.

Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.

Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.

I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.

To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.

The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence.

It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.

When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.

The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.

Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic it is not for everybody it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.

Doctors always think anybody doing something they arent is a quack also they think all patients are idiots.

Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God.

Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.

...free will does not mean one will but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.

You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.

A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... Nothing outside you can give you any place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location

Not too much, though there's a certain amount of rancour and bitterness when someone tries to fire you.

Our national history has so often filled us with bitterness and the feeling of helplessness.

If there is anything worse than international warfare, is civil warfare, and the United States was destined to experience it in the extreme of bitterness.

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

I wouldn't call it bitter. I think it's just sweet. I've always believed my life seems like it's gotten better and better as each decade has gone by. So I don't see any I don't see any bitterness about it.

Hurt leads to bitterness, bitterness to anger, travel too far that road and the way is lost.

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.

Beauty, more than bitterness, makes the heart break.

After voluntary exertions on the part of our people to which the history of the world furnishes no parallel, is the old root of bitterness still to remain in the ground, to sprout and bear fruit in the future as it has borne fruit in the past?

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it.

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers.

From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers.

I've purged myself of bitterness and anger and remained open to love.