“she was completely whole
and yet never fully complete”
― Maquita Donyel Irvin, Stories of a Polished Pistil: Lace and Ruffles

“The depths of her thoughts will have you never wanting to surface for air...”
― Maquita Donyel Irvin, Stories of a Polished Pistil: Lace and Ruffles

“I didn't come looking for you the day you uninvitedly appeared on my doorstep

How did we go from nonchalant conversation
me waiting for you to turn me off
with corny jokes and mind dumbing conversation
to
love

To love and mind blowing chemistry that I've yet to make sense of
What are you here to teach me?”
― Maquita Donyel Irvin, Stories of a Polished Pistil: Lace and Ruffles

“...unforgivingly, and forcefully magnificent...”
― Maquita Donyel Irvin

“The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn't mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“She was rare, few and far between
She suspected he would be as well
And the thought of two rare, few and far between individuals
Doing all that was necessary for that rare, few and far between
Meeting to occur
Drove her to write”
― Maquita Donyel Irvin, Stories of a Polished Pistil: Lace and Ruffles

“The Christian writer will feel that in the greatest depth of vision, moral judgment will be implicit, and that when we are invited to represent the country according to survey, what we are asked to do is to separate mystery from manners and judgment from vision, in order to produce something a little more palatable to the modern temper. We are asked to form our consciences in the light of statistics, which is to establish the relative as absolute. For many this may be a convenience, since we don't live in an age of settled belief; but it cannot be a convenience, it cannot even be possible, for the writer who is a Catholic. He will feel that any long-continued service to it will produce a soggy, formless, and sentimental literature, one that will provide a sense of spiritual purpose for those who connect the spirit with romanticism and a sense of joy for those who confuse that virtue with satisfaction. The storyteller is concerned with what is; but if what is is what can be determined by survey, then the disciples of Dr. Kinsey and Dr. Gallup are sufficient for the day thereof.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“Fantasy like thought that no man could rain
Just let her reign
Run wild with her unafraid
Of any rain storms
They only wash the mud away and make way
For double rainbows and sunny days”
― Maquita Donyel Irvin, Stories of a Polished Pistil: Lace and Ruffles

“Unfortunately, to try to disconnect faith from vision is to do violence to the whole personality, and the whole personality participates in the act of writing. The tensions of being a Catholic novelist are probably never balanced for the writer until the Church becomes so much a part of his personality that he can forget about her—in the same sense that when he writes, he forgets about himself.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“...I fell asleep and had a dream that a king was liquidated by a group of kind faces...”
― Maquita Donyel Irvin

“The writer who position is Christian, and probably also the writer whose position is not, will begin to wonder at this point if there could not be some ugly correlation between our unparalleled prosperity and the stridency of these demands for a literature that shows us the joy of life. He may at least be permitted to ask if these screams for joy would be quite so piercing if joy were really more abundant in our prosperous society.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“...I fell asleep and had a dream that a king was liquidated by a group of kind faces....”
― Maquita Donyel Irvin, Stories of a Polished Pistil: Lace and Ruffles

“The False Self constructs all sorts of layers of ego and angst and striving and foolishness, while the True Self, deep at the center of a person, waits for the time when the False Self will die and allow the real life to begin.”
― Vinita Hampton Wright, The Art of Spiritual Writing: How to Craft Prose That Engages and Inspires Your Readers

“The real prayer is your own soul-tending. It's not the writing that needs prayer - it's you. You need to find the center that is still and strengthening. You need to deal with whatever issue is dogging you today, whether it's anxiety about your teenager or resistance to the topic you are trying to write.”
― Vinita Hampton Wright, The Soul Tells a Story: Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life

“When a writer takes on the task of exploring the world of the spirit, she has invited a process that will change her permanently. If she has done her work well, it will change her readers too.”
― Vinita Hampton Wright, The Art of Spiritual Writing: How to Craft Prose That Engages and Inspires Your Readers

“If you want to be an authentic writer, learn to tell the truth, to wrestle with it, to reflect on it, and then to write about it with great care. And great humility.”
― Vinita Hampton Wright, The Art of Spiritual Writing: How to Craft Prose That Engages and Inspires Your Readers

“A growing spiritual life leads to a growing healthy sense of self. As a Christian I grow spiritually by admitting what's not going well with me - and also by admitting that God's grace is already dealing with my sins and imperfections - as well as admitting that I am lovely and amazing by mere virtue of the fact that God of the universe loves me, creates me, desires me, and will never forsake me. If I am to grow spiritually, I will continue to hold all of that truth in grace-filled tension. I see the truth of myself, but that truth is complete only if it includes Divine Presence as an ongoing reality.”
― Vinita Hampton Wright, The Art of Spiritual Writing: How to Craft Prose That Engages and Inspires Your Readers

“If you have writer's block, dig into it. You are resisting something. Something is getting in the way of your creative work. Resistance always means something.”
― Vinita Hampton Wright, The Art of Spiritual Writing: How to Craft Prose That Engages and Inspires Your Readers

“All reality is mysteriously charged with the invisible presence of God.”
― Dana Gioia, The Catholic Writer Today: And Other Essays