Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.
It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.
I am a Catholic not like someone else would be a Baptist or a Methodist, but like someone else would be an atheist.
Go warn the children of God of the terrible speed of mercy.
I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true. May 19, 1962
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.
The Church’s stand on birth control is the most absolutely spiritual of all her stands and with all of us being materialists at heart, there is little wonder that it causes unease. I wish various fathers would quit trying to defend it by saying that the world can support 40 billion. I will rejoice the day when they say: This is right whether we all rot on top of each other or not, dear children, as we certainly may. Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding.
There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it, and since, in art, the way of saying a thing becomes a part of what is said, every work of art is unique and requires fresh attention.
Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.
It’s always wrong of course to say that you can’t do this or you can’t do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.
I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.
Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding
