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

'Help' is a prayer that is always answered.

I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.

These are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition.

If God was giving me a ham, I'd be crazy not to receive it. Maybe it was the ham of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

Very few writers really know what they are doing until they have done it.

Mothers are supposed to listen and, afterward, to respond with some wisdom and perspective, but these things were not my mother's strong suit.