I think the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.

You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend.

Anytime you write about priests or cops, they're hot-button professions.

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

For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man.

Carmen prayed hard. She prayed while standing near the priest in hopes it would give her request extra credibility. What she prayed for was nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone.

I used to do everything to keep a wall up around myself and keep my life quiet so that I could write.