If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.

I don't know what takes more courage: surviving a lifelong endurance test because you once made a promise or breaking free, disrupting all your world.

I suspect that marriage is like parenthood: every last one of us is an amateur at it.

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

I wonder how many times we dream that kind of dream-something strange and illogical-and fail to realize God is trying to tell us something.

But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.

I love to think about chance - about how one little overheard word, one pebble in a shoe, can change the universe.