Unproductive worry - like Parkinson's proverbial law - tends to expand to fill the time available.

God does not begin by asking us about our ability, but only about our availability, and if we then prove our dependability, he will increase our capability.

The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched.

If, in the end, you have not chosen Jesus Christ it will not matter what you have chosen.

The more seriously we work on our own imperfections, the less we are judgemental of the imperfections of others.

We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.

No love is ever wasted. Its worth does not lie in reciprocity.

The submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give' are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us.

We should not assume; however, that just because something is unexplainable by us, it is unexplainable.

Trials and tribulations tend to squeeze the artificiality out of us, leaving the essence of what we really are and clarifying what we really yearn for.

You rock a sobbing child without wondering if today's world is passing you by, because you know you hold tomorrow tightly in your arms.

How am I going to explain to my kids one day that I can't buy them a happy meal because the toy will make them fat?

Kindness is not something you are born with

If you know the right path, never keep it to only yourself! If you know the wrong path, never keep it to only yourself!

Between two evils I always picked the one I never tried before.

There are two kinds of talents man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent you just touch it up once in a while.

I'm ready to do some classics. Maybe I wasn't in the beginning. I weighed 179 pounds when I got to New York, and I had that thick Southern accent. I still talk Southern, but I can do without it.

If you're a woman writer, sometime, somewhere, you will be asked: Do you think of yourself as a writer first, or as a woman first? Look out. Whoever asks this hates and fears both writing and women.

The World Will Break Your Heart. Grief might be, in some ways, the long aftermath of love, the internal work of knowing, holding, more fully valuing what we have lost.

Fiction is just that-fiction. Yes, it is serious business, but it should also be taken for face value. It's entertainment. It's escapism. It's 365 pages of relaxation.

I never been a hater of these other cats, who never really had nothing, being successful. That's not my problem.