I like it when someone gives me a new book of poetry by a poet I haven't read.

It's usually easier for me to begin writing in a character's voice if that person is different from me in some significant way.

I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train.

I think that the practice of writing every day was what made me remember that writing doesn't have anything to do with publishing books. It can be totally separate and private - a comforting thought.

I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.

In America you make your plans and then they happen.

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a few unusual writers can make something great without that.

I think, in general, it's better not to respond to reviews of your work.

Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different.

Alice Munro is a particular kind of short story writer in that she writes long, character-driven short stories.

If somebody says your story is only published because you look nice in the photo, that maybe spurs you on to write.

Everything in our life is an illusion.

We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that’s not the way we live. The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions.

If you wisely invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

I dissolved, so white, so unapproachable, amid my white flame, in the whiteness of moonlight

The first priority of my life is to be holy, and the second goal of my life is to be a scholar.

Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.

I have two homes in Malibu, a home in Canada that I'm building, and I just love pouring my heart out into this part of my life.

Prayer is faith passing into action.

I'm currently working on a Mind Siege for youth.