For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge into darkness. For there is a blackness of truth, too. They say it is a terrible thing to fall into the Grace of God. I am prepared to believe that.

He lived the latter part of his life in Fairfield Connecticut and Stratton Vermont where he died of complications from bone cancer. S. However Warren recanted these views in an article on the Civil Rights Movement "Divided South Searches Its Soul" which appeared in the July 9 1956 issue of Life magazine.

He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Robert Penn Warren (April 24 1905 – September 15 1989) was an American poet novelist and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism.