What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.

Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up.

I didn't study writing in school, I studied biology as an undergraduate and graduate student. So I think that I write fiction in the scientific way. I love invention, obviously; I love creation of character. But I do feel very rooted in the real world, even in the way that I create characters.

To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another that is surely the basic instinct - crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is!

In the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in.

I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.