I do not believe a person can take two issues from Scripture, those being abortion and gay marriage, and adhere to them as sins, then neglect much of the rest and call himself a fundamentalist or even a conservative. The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbor and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, because he takes what he wants from Scripture and ignores the rest.

Most of us are waiting. We're waiting for something interesting to happen. And I think we're going to wait forever if we don't do something more interesting with our lives.

When something happens to you, you have two choices in how to deal with it. You can either get bitter, or get better.

I used to write when I was in the mood or felt inspired. Anymore, I write whether I feel inspired or not. It's a discipline. So that's definitely different. It's part of maturing as a person and as a professional.

They are lonely. I'm not talking about lonely for a lover or a friend. I mean lonely in the universal sense, lonely inside the understanding that we are tiny people on a tiny little earth suspended in an endless void that echoes past stars and stars of stars.

I took William Zinsser's advice that you write to yourself and you hope that there are people out there who are like you.

All relationships are living and alive and moving and becoming something.