Fundamentally I think we all write the kinds of work we'd most like to read. Or we try to.

I'd say that most of life seems to me to be that way, a mixture of the mundane and the mythic, when you're living the life of the mind.

I don't see the direct correlation between my personal life and the novel I'm writing until I'm at the end of the novel or very close to it.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you know you have to hit the ground running.

As writers, we live very much in our own minds much of the time, buzzing in our unconscious spaces as we go about the business of living in the world.

I feel that if I establish the world or the premise from the first line, then I can get the reader to come with me where I want her to go.

When a certain show or film or celebrity captures the imagination of the masses that has a good deal to say about us, I think, and what is happening in our collective psyche.

I could have a lot of fun with Michael Jackson, I'm sure.

As I get older, I'm finding that I recognize certain celebrities only because they frequently grace the pages of US Weekly, but beyond that, I have no idea what they do.

I'm a pop culture junkie. I'm a People magazine reader, an US Weekly subscriber; all of those celebrity magazines get my dollar.

As a reader I gravitate toward work that rests in the gray area, that doesn't come with easy answers.

I have a lot of problems understanding connections between people and how to negotiate that. It makes everything hard offstage.

In spite of the seven thousand books of expert advice, the right way to disciplne a child is still a mystery to most fathers and...mothers Only your grandmother and Genghis Khan know how to do it.

Determination. You have to be willing to put in the extra time and the extra practice to be the best.

Writing has to have a great deal of certainty and self-assurance, but it's not arrogant.

The goal of the pastor is not to get people to show up but to get people to grow up.

Each novel is harder than its predecessor because I must work harder at not repeating myself. However, I enjoy the challenge. This is the greatest job in the world.

Simplicity is the outcome of technical subtlety; it is the goal, not the starting point.

The mystery of the Cross, a mystery of love, can only be understood in prayer. Pray and weep, kneeling before the Cross.

Creeds are definitions of what it means to be a Christian. They are fences that, albeit imperfectly, seek to separate sheep from goats.

A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.