Books could be an incredible adventure. I stayed under my blanket and barely moved, and no one would have guessed how my mind raced and my heart soared with stories.

It was our favorite part of the day, this in-between time, and it always seemed to last longer than it should--a magic and lavender space unpinned from the hours around it, between worlds.

My life was my life; I would have to stare it down, somehow, and make it work for me.

Sometimes I wish we could rub out all of our mistakes and start fresh, from the beginning,' I said. 'And sometimes I think there isn't anything to us but our mistakes.

Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind.

If I can write one sentence, simple and true every day, I'll be satisfied.

I miss good old-fashioned honorable people just trying to make something of life. Simply, without hurting anyone else. I know that makes me a sap.

Dogs are easy. If their tails are up and their eyes are soft, you're in.

Not everyone out in a storm wants to be saved

I'd had my share of rain. My mother's illness ... had weighed on me, but the years before had been heavy, too. I was only twenty eight.

She was also incredibly confident, with a way of moving and talking that communicated that she didn't need anyone to tell her she was beautiful or worthwhile.

Renew your mind by washing it with truth: God's Word.

Our heads will happen cold when this is found.

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums and those in cemeteries.

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.

Pride is allowed to have an element of worry, especially when you are a mother.

The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.

There is no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.

Sometimes my worst day - one filled with pain and suffering - in the eyes of God, is my best day if I've born it cheerfully and I've born it with love.

There is something so beautiful inside you that if you knew it, you would fall in love with it. It is irresistible. You can truly experience that.

One of my earliest memories is of being about three and a half, climbing through the legs of a man who I didn't know was the famous actor, Patrick Magee.