In this book, much is metaphorical, not as it seems. It’s written for writing’s sake, as if I were to say, “Let me tell you I’m dying.” Well of course I am. So are you.

I’ve had a fountain pen surgically implanted in my left index finger to save trouble. My body is tattooed with line upon line of truth, fiction, and a not-always-pleasing mix of the two.

When I pour a bowl of Uncle Sam’s cereal, I never know if I should stand when I eat, salute it first, or simply hum the Star Spangled Banner between mouthfuls.

I speak, I speak, and truth at that. Writers are a curious breed: brooding, fickle, alternately loving and hating their work—and each other. You’re my friend? Don’t pick up that pen!

Without the hard we stay too soft, and heaven is reduced to myths like life. Theology aside, it’s plain to see that God forbids we get too comfortable.

Today I fed him right off the bat, and only checked Facebook twice.

If a book can save—redeem us from the mediocrity of the mundane—surely, there must be a God.

Nonfiction. I didn’t choose it as much as it chose me. It squatted and birthed me one raw winter day then jerked me up and set me to scribing.

I think that’s why I write—the not knowing and the blasted good feeling I get out of it all.

Writing makes me hard, like a fisherman, and brown from the heat. Tossing out and reeling in is a job for visionaries and those with calloused hands.

This world rubs me raw, scours me smooth like an SOS pad put to a grease-caked skillet. And pain: it stabs and scrapes and pulls me back to earth, my final B&B, that worm-spun cot of cool black sod.

The problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem.

How now, spirit, whither wander you?

It is easy to be intelligent, but it is very difficult to be wise because wisdom comes from experience.

I've never worried about payback. People are hungry for leadership that's not afraid of political consequence.

Prayer among men is supposed a means to change the person to whom we pray; but prayer to God doth not change him, but fits us to receive the things prayed for.

My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.

A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything.

I don't want to be known as a jerk forever.

What we link to pleasure and what we link to pain determines our destiny.

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupts, but being seasoned with a gracious voice obscures the show of evil.