“I would probably have to say that reading fiction those stories fill the space that other people might use religious stories for. The bulk of what I know about human life Ive gotten from novels. A...”

“Quite a metaphor. The person in the most pain wins. Does that mean I get a Blue Ribbon?”

“Laurie herself was more focused on the years when her kids were little, when she felt so necessary and purposeful, a battery all charged up with love. Every day she used it up and every night it go...”

“When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.”

“I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.”

“Eve still marveled on a daily basis at the speed with which her own life had changed. A year ago, she'd been lost and flailing, and now she was found. She wanted to call it a miracle, but it was si...”

“Once you figure out who you are and what you love about yourself, I think it all kind of falls into place.”

“All seasons are spectacular.”

“When real people fall down in life, they get right back up and keep on walking.”

“Falling in love is like getting hit by a truck and yet not being mortally wounded. just sick to your stomach, high one minute, low the next. Starving hungry but unable to eat. hot, cold, forever ho...”

“Sometimes it takes a good fall to really know where you stand”

“I have often wondered since at my own firmness. In that dreadful interview with my uncle I had felt, in the whirl and horror of my mind, on the very point of submitting, just as nervous people are ...”

“Without a relationship with God, it is not possible to have order in your life.”

“once science had declared a thing possible, there was no escape from its eventual realization”

“The possible ranks higher than the actual.”