she got a reputation for an easy smile and a sharp tongue, and using one to balance the other, she seemed friendly but distant

What's the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life.

I don't believe that there is any true friendship without a bond of honor, and the honor in friendship is the respect you give the other that she also gives you.

...I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The academy may lie, but literature tries to tell the truth.

I do not write about nice people. I am not nice people.

Everything that comes to us is a blessing or a test. That’s all you need to know in this life…just the certainty that God’s got His eye on you, that He knows what you are made of, what you need to grow on. Why,questioning’s a sin, it’s pointless. He will show you your path in His own good time. And long as I remember that, I’m fine.

Babies change things, open doors you thought were shut, close others. Make you into something you never been.