As I see it, my job as a writer isn't to judge, but to take a reader as far inside as I can and let them dwell there.

It is a negative sort of achievement, she thinks, to have spent a life warding something off.

Only the luckless, the petty or the deranged [end] up in court.

Discovery is the joy.

My interest is always to get as deeply as I can into the minds and spirits of the characters and let the readers empathize or judge as they will.

Sound systems are what turn cars into escape vehicles, even if you've got nowhere to go.

...I did what most kids do when their world feels destroyed. I tried to care less about what remained...It was untrue, of course.

...I did what most kids do when their world feels destroyed. I tried to care less about what remained...This was untrue, of course.

It struck me then, for the first time, how unethical anxiety is, how it voids the reality of other people by conscripting them as palliatives for your own fear.

Being in love is not always being happy but being happy is always being in love

fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.

I want to be sure I can deliver what people expect to hear. I just don't know if I can physically do it. Or if I should.

If you don't make up your mind, your unmade mind will unmake you.

Prayer is the greatest of all forces, because it honors God and brings him into active aid.

People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream.

In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.

Botox to me is not surgery.

The more you have, the more people want to use you and damage you.

With Iran's long history of lies and non-cooperation, why are we talking to them? Why are we giving them legitimacy?