Every human being has appetites difficult to control but far fewer have humility, gentleness, and an awareness of their weaknesses.

The world is full of broken people. Splints, casts, miracle drugs, and time can't mend fractured hearts, wounded hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits.

If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not in fact his friends.

Although the human heart is selfish and arrogant, so many struggle against their selfishness and learn humility; because of them, as long as there is life, there is hope that beauty lost can be rediscovered, that what has been reviled can be redeemed.

Some days I'm lucky to squeeze out a page of copy that pleases me, but I get as many as six or seven pages on a very good day; the average is probably three pages.

I can remember the times when I started including humor in novels that were suspenseful. I was told you can't do that because you can't keep the audience in suspense if they're laughing. My attitude was, if the character has a sense of humor, then that makes the character more real because that's how we deal with the vicissitudes of life, we deal with it through humor.

I am basically a pretty good autodidact. I can teach myself things.