Because of her singing they all went away feeling moved, feeling comforted, feeling, perhaps, the slightest tremors of faith.

If anybody had shown me the paperwork for how my life was going to look in five years, I would have said, "No. That is not where I want to go."

Seeing images of violence - it's always about how somebody's going to kill you.

If a person has never given writing a try, they assume that a brilliant idea is hard to come by. But really, even if it takes some digging, ideas are out there. Just open your eyes and look at the world. Writing the ideas down, it turns out, is the real trick.

I don't believe in fate, as in, which I - as a Catholic, I think, sort of predestination. But I certainly believe in chance.

You throw a person in the river and then make a spectacle of jumping in to save them.

I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.