Every creative person, and I think probably every other person, faces resistance when they are trying to create something good...The harder the resistance, the more important the task must be.

How many people have damaged their own lives by mistaking enablement for grace?

We believe we will be made whole by our accomplishments, our possessions, or our social status. It's written in the fabric of our DNA that life used to be beautiful and now it isn't, and if only this and only that, it would be beautiful again.

A story is based on what people think is important, so when we live a story, we are telling people around us what we think is important.

Everybody wants to be fancy and new. Nobody wants to be themselves. I mean, maybe people want to be themselves, but they want to be different, with different clothes or shorter hair or less fat. It's a fact. If there was a guy who just liked being himself and didn't want to be anybody else, that guy would be the most different guy in the world and everybody would want to be him.

I had some friends commenting me books, but mostly it was people I didn't know. But they're fans. They're fans of the books, so they have a working knowledge of how I write, and they know what they like and what they don't like. I'm really grateful for their feedback.

The economy is turning around, so that's going to help a little bit.