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

Good stories must travel through conflict. And in epic stories, the conflict must become unbearable.

It occurs to me it is not so much the aim of the devil to lure me with evil as it is to preoccupy me with the meaningless.

I fell in love with books. Some people find beauty in music, some in painting, some in landscape, but I find it in words. By beauty, I mean the feeling you have suddenly glimpsed another world, or looked into a portal that reveals a kind of magic or romance out of which the world has been constructed, a feeling there is something more than the mundane, and a reason for our plodding.

We live on top of the created world, I think to myself, not in it.

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

I loved the fact that it wasn't my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God's, that my part was just to communicate love and approval.