If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet. And if story is derived from real life, if story is just condensed version of life then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another.

And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it.

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing.

For me, the beginning of sharing my faith with people began by throwing out Christianity and embracing Christian spirituality, a nonpolitical mysterious system that can be experienced but not explained.

I know, from the three visits I made to him, the blended composite of love and fear that exists only in a boy's notion of his father.

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.

God made a whole beautiful earth and decided to put you in it, to experience all of this beauty. You can't do that watching television all the time.