Flattery has a short battery life, but reminding people they are amazing and precious and wanted and works of art can truly change their lives.

Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body.

There's a lot of letters, and a lot of people come say "hi" at book signings, but I'm amazed at how normal everybody is.

It's something you can actually control. With writing, it feels like it's given to you, and when the good stuff hits, it feels like it's coming from some other planet.And you're just channeling it.

If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, “Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.”

I can't do it. It would be like, say, trying to fall in love with somebody, or trying to convince yourself that your favorite food is pancakes. You don't decide those things, they just happen to you. If God is real, He needs to happen to me.

The words 'alone,' 'lonely,' and 'loneliness' are three of the most powerful words in the English language. Those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul.