The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you also have to make a living.

shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us

I think of Nashville as a very natural place. We're easy going, we are ourselves. There isn't a lot of preening or trying to impress. So it's an easy place to just be and that is a good state from which to write.

It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.

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 saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and has nothing to do with my life.

Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.