Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.

Less is more.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.

I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.

Thought is action in rehearsal.

A clear sentence is no accident.

If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

We are God’s inheritance by grace.

The light ought to shine for the darkness to fade.

I'm not an athiest. How can you not believe in something that doesn't exist? That's way too convoluted for me.

I mean I’m 16 and 17 years wiser now. So if I could do it when I was 18 with a guy, I can certainly do it at 33 with a lady.

I wanted to find a place to hide from all of it, where the nightmares and the rivers and reality couldn't find me. For me, that place was always inside a book.

I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.

Frederick Buechner can find grace and redemption even in the shoddiest, phoniest aspects of a cultural wasteland. One reads Lion Country...with hope and delight.

More and more as time has gone on, I realize that playing is really more about listening than it is about playing.

The biggest doubts come in the five minutes after I hit send.

The live concerts are everything and I’m very grateful that most of my career, I’m a live artist, I’ve been doing this. So I’ve traveled quite a lot, played in - I never stopped playing.