It's possible to do both as a writer - to engage and have a family and all that good stuff - and I chose not to for the sake of the career.

We don't think much about how our love stories will affect the world, but they do. Children learn what's worth living for and what's worth dying for by the stories they watch us live. I want to teach our children how to get scary close, and more, how to be brave. I want to teach them that love is worth what it costs.

I think writers can get a little melodramatic sometimes about their work, and it helps me not to do that, to just say, "Well, this is how I make a living, and I need to become a very good craftsman."

Job found contentment and even joy, outside the context of comfort, health or stability. He understood the story was not about him, and he cared more about the story then he did about himself.

If a piece of genius comes, it comes, and it if doesn't, it doesn't.

We don't naturally want to take responsibility for our lives. We want to give the responsibility to someone else. We blame them when our lives aren't good.

Great stories move through fear.