“Many Americans would die naked in the middle of the road before they'd tell you what's hurt them most. But a born Southerner will show you the cell in their heart that burns the hardest. They'll hold it out to you in their bare right hand.” ― Reynolds Price, The Tongues of Angels

“Life is short and often stingy; feast the heart with what it craves, short of cruelty, and let the world wonder.”
― Reynolds Price, Clear Pictures: First Loves, First Guides

“Strength just comes in one brand— you stand up at sunrise and meet what they send you and keep your hair combed.”
― Reynolds Price, Kate Vaiden

“Almost all of my really good times have been silent but have had to end.”
― Reynolds Price, Kate Vaiden

“A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens--second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths.”
― Reynolds Price, A Palpable God: Thirty Stories Translated from the Bible With an Essay on the Origins and Life of Narrative

“Did I think then, or do I believe later, that the vision was in any sense a direct call to me from God or some other intelligent force in nature? Was it a gesture uniquely intended to draw me near? Near to whom and for what? Am I ready to say, at this late point in my life, that I was singled out in childhood for special attention from God?
No, I'm not. I think it's possible that such revelations await a good many people who are lucky enough, or careful enough, to spend solitary time in feasible places and to be prepared-consciously or accidentally-to listen to a widely available transmission.”
― Reynolds Price, Letter to a Godchild: Concerning Faith

“We crave nothing less that the perfect story; And while we chatter or listen all our lives to a din of craving – jokes, anecdotes, novels, dreams, films, plays, songs, half the words of our days – We are satisfied only by the one short tale we feel to be true; History is the will of a just God who knows us.”
― Reynolds Price, A Palpable God: Thirty Stories Translated from the Bible With an Essay on the Origins and Life of Narrative