A person cannot coast along in old destructive habits year after year and accept whatever comes along. A person must stand up on her own two legs and walk. Get off the bus and go get on another. Climb out of the ditch and cross the road. Find the road that s where you want to go. ... The only sermon that counts is the one that is formed by our actions. She would quit drinking and thereby show Kyle life is what you make it. A person can grab hold of her life and change things for the better. This happens all the time. We are not chips of wood drifting down the stream of time. We have oars.

Being Lutheran, Mother believed that self-pity is a deadly sin and so is nostalgia, and she had no time for either

Your life is a work of art, and in the end, the underlying theme of great art is bravery and hope and love.

Not everyone has a Life's Work. Some people simply have a Life.

Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.

Bad things don't happen to writers; it's all material.

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.