If you want to bond with your friends, do something very hard with them, something that you won't be able to do alone.

How disappointing would it be get to heaven and find out God created life to be enjoyed while all we did was worry?

Of his new book, Don says: “It might be the greatest book ever written. I don’t think anybody is going to read a book again after they read my new one. I think God is proud of me. I am going to make a killing off this thing and I’m going to use the money to go to space.

I'm amazed at how much my writing is improved when I step away from the computer, even in small amounts. If I'm stuck, I vacuum the living room or walk the dog. I'm amazed at what comes out of that... We have to realize that part of the writing life where we're sitting down at the computer is harvesting the crops, but you have to have planted them and watered them and created fertile soil - and that's a life.

And when you find love, or when you are mature enough to understand it, the feeling you get is gratitude.

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere.

Believing in God is as much like falling in love as it is making a decision. Love is both something that happens to you and something you decide upon.