I don't want to force my politics on my readers.

In life, finding a voice is speaking and living the truth. Each of you is an original. Each of you has a distinctive voice. When you find it, your story will be told. You will be heard.

One thing you really have to watch as a writer is getting on a soapbox or pulpit about anything. You don't want to alienate readers.

You live your life today, Not tommorow, and certainly not yesterday.

Prisons are fascinating places, especially when the inmates are educated white-collar types.

Jesus preached more and taught more about helping the poor and the sick and the hungry than he did about heaven and hell. Shouldn't that tell us something?

When witnesses concoct lies, they often miss the obvious.

If you're gonna be stupid you gotta be tough.

When you work at street level you never know who's going to walk through your door.

Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it.

judge not that ye be not judged

What you think of your self is more important than what others think of you.

I had too many things to say, and too small a brain to sort them out with.

Compliments and criticism are all ultimately based on some form of projection.

Judge your neighbor, write it down. Ask four questions, turn it around.

This leaf here took forever to become that perfect leaf. We're that. We're work in progress. That's actually being alive.

The wind is a very difficult sound to get. It's always changing.

When the Church listens to the Holy Spirit, it becomes fruitful. New movements are born.

I can always live by my pen.

I worked in Tesco's staff canteen because I fancied a boy on the tills. I served him his lunch in a hairnet and tan tights. Not just that, of course - I had a lovely white onesie.

Such physical matters were nice, yet, to him, intelligence and passion born of living, the ability to move and be moved by subtleties of the mind and spirit, were what really counted.