You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer.

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.

Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

You are always someones favorite unfolding story

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.

Life is all about Takeaways from great people and Giveaways to the needy ones.

She's hiding and no one else sees. She's dying and no one else notices.

Before garden, vine or grape was in the world, " writes one, "our soul was drunken with immortal wine.

Some of your hurts you have cured And the sharpest you still have survived But what torments of grief you endured From the evil which never arrived.

I told the students that we can exert pressure without resorting to violence, and that we can move towards democracy without violence; that way, God will allow it.

The most powerful lesson you can learn in running? You're capable of much more than you think.

Happiness and self-confidence come naturally when you feel yourself moving and progressing toward becoming the very best person you can possibly be.

And yet, people still turn to Jesus. You will notice though that the kind of people who turn to Jesus tend to be the sort of people who haven't done that well with everybody else.

Emerging at the other end, we will not be the same as we were; we will have become more humble, more connected to the natural world, fitter, leaner, more skilled and, ultimately, wiser.

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.