And we've read scary books and watched scary movies and TV shows together. He's met monsters, ghouls, and demons on the page and on the screen. There's nothing like watching Anaconda with your best friend or lying in bed next to your mother reading Roald Dahl, because that way you get to explore dark stuff safely. You get to laugh with it, to step out on the vampire's dance floor and take him for a spin, and then step back into your life. When you make friends with fear, it can't rule you.

I write everything as a wake-up call to myself and others, to anyone who may have gotten tired of hitting the snooze button.

Learning to love back is the hardest part of being alive.

Anything you say from your heart to God is a prayer. But "why" is rarely a useful question. When Job keeps asking God why he has had such loss and suffering, God says, "You wouldn't understand." I always want to know why, and I almost never have a good answer.

You are going to love some of your characters because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason.

Needless to say, there was no one around remotely fitting the description of a normal person: I was at a writing conference.

If you are hoping to find your self-worth and fulfillment in other peoples' opinion of your writing, you will never find it.