I've been writing fiction as long as I've been writing poetry. It's just that the poetry took off, and it took me a lot longer to figure out how to write a story.

Travel is something that I like to do because it gives you lots of images, and it also really makes you think about your own place in the world in a very different way.

I think it's really hard to be joyful. I work hard at it. I always feel like it's a choice. You can be joyful or you can be depressed, and there just doesn't seem to be any future in depression.

If someone didn't believe in me that would kind of be a compliment in a way.

I want a God big enough to love those who don't believe in him.

You want to make a representative selection, but at the same time, you want to give a sense of the whole project. I have this big conflict in my writing life that I'm trying to work out all the time.

We cry coming into the world, as everyone around us laughs with joy. And we laugh with joy leaving this world, when everyone around us cries.

It is always easier to promote war than peace, easier to end the peace than end the war, because peace is fragile and war is durable.

The Christian in the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.

The essence of a democracy is a free electorate.

Two of my boys are Manchester United fans; one is an Arsenal fan. Whenever there is a game I can take the boys to, I love taking them.

See it in terms of paint. We don't learn subject matter, we learn paint. The musician can play any score that is set before him.

Where,oh,where are the eternity-conscious believers? Where are the souls white-hot for God because they fear His holy name and presence and so live with eternity's values in view?

Never lose hope, my heart, miracles dwell in the invisible. If the whole world turns against you keep your eyes on the Friend.

It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt.

I always wonder, aside from even my name, what if my parents never split up? What if my mother never died? It swirls in my head all the time.