Alice Adams wrote a sweet note to me after my first novel came out when I was 26, and I was so blown away that I sent her a bunch of stamps by return mail. I have no idea what I was thinking. It was a star-struck impulse.

My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable

Grace means you're in a different universe from where you had been stuck, when you had absolutely no way to get there on your own.

Once an old woman at my church said the secret is that God loves us exactly the way we are and that he loves us too much to let us stay like this, and I'm just trying to trust that.

Some people wanted to get rich or famous, but my friends and I wanted to get real. We wanted to get deep. (Also, I suppose, we wanted to get laid.)

There is nothing as sweet as a comeback, when you are down and out, about to lose, and out of time.

Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.