"...I appreciate your noble intention to review my work with superlatives and I suggest you write the review before you read the book, then you will be even more reckless with them..."

"...I read a part of a Death in the Family in one of the Martha Foley collections and saw right then I didn't want to read any more of it. Agee is also the author of the worst story ever written by a man, something called A Mother's Tale. Also in a Martha Foley. You really ought to read it. It's unbelievable..."

"...Yes I finished my story and it is a a [sic] beauty but I can't use it. I used the occasion of a town pageant. We had one here in 1953, a sesquicentennial and a local fellow went beserk [sic] and shot the head of the pageant committee and a lawyer and them himself..."

"...Since I never emerge from these things sounding like anything but a cretin, I have written what I have to say to her down and I intend to present her with it. For the rest I will confine myself to comments on the weather..."

"...My galleys are on the way and I expect them to be here tomorrow and I dred [sic] having to read the whole thing again and face it in print. The first time is the worst..."

"I know how you feel about the novel because I am at sort of the same place now myself. I don't have a novel to write and you can't write a novel until you've got something expandable in you. At the same time, I find you can't continue to write one story after another, or anyway I can't because I don't have that many stories either..."

"...I haven't read Wise Blood since it was published. Maybe some day [sic] I will read it again and decide what I think of it. I know that this new one is much more ambitious and probably less immediately satisfying than WB [sic]..."

"...I hope you get paid for these reviews if they are going to cut them. Nothing but money makes that endurable..."

"...These are all people exactly like what I might invent to torture some poor character. The article itself was better than I hoped it would be but then it should have been because I wrote down what I wanted to say and handed it to her when she came. Nevertheless, I have had the creeps for the past two weeks..."

"My mother has copped all the copies of that article to send to the relatives who don't appreciate me. As there are a great many of them, I don't seem to be able to put my hand on an extra copy but if one turns up, I'll send it to you..."