In general, I think I'm quick to worry about disasters of all kinds.

How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.

Fear is ... a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do.

Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?

But the past is long, and the future is short.

It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.

We were a different kind of Christian, the quiet, reasonable kind, a breed embarrassed by the mention of miracles.

I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.

To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

There's nothing quite so irritating to an author as a family member's easy confidence that, of course, the book will come.

You do have a tendency to severe spinal cords." "Only for you.

Faith receives, day by day, what a loving Heavenly Father apportions.

I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand.

Anybody that makes fun of me, I'm like, 'Yeah, and then I got touched by Hugh Jackman'

Before I thought there was a common denominator between my films - as if all my characters were sisters - but I'm not so sure now.

Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them.

Whenever I refused to follow my fate, something very hard to bear would happen in my life.

I lived in Iowa for pretty much the rest of my life, but I just moved to St. Louis and opened up a gym and MMA training center.

I assure you, princess, if you saw the real me, you’d run for cover. (Zarek) Only if I knew you’d be waiting under that cover for me. (Astrid)