Ron Coulter

“These beliefs were mainly Protestant but not yet petty middle-class puritanism: there remained still an element fairly high stepping and wide gestured in its personal conduct. The petty middle class of fundamentalists who saw no difference between wine-drinking, dancing, card-playing, and adultery, had not yet got altogether the upper hand in that part of the country - in fact, never did except in certain limited areas; but it was making a brave try.”
― Katherine Anne Porter, Collected Stories and Other Writings

“the author’s judgment is always present, always evident to anyone who knows how to look for it. Whether its particular forms are harmful or serviceable is always a complex question, a question that cannot be settled by any easy reference to abstract rules. As we begin now to deal with this question, we must never forget that though the author can to some extent choose his disguises, he can never choose to disappear.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction

“the implied Shakespeare is thoroughly engaged with life, and he does not conceal his judgment on the selfish, the foolish, and the cruel.”
― Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction

“The church is not in the morals business. The world is in the morals business, quite rightfully; and it has done a fine job of it, all things considered.”
― Robert Farrar Capon