With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.

As an individual with my own hurts, I go into the Garden (Gethsemane) as often as I need to. There I identify with the pain in the other, with my part in that pain, my part in tempting someone to wound me. I experience the other's pain, and God's pain, and am devastated - because their pain becomes my own. Feeling such anguish, I can forgive, or deeply repent, either for myself or on behalf of the other.

With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.

Most people who are trying to write kind of sit in their basements and pull it out of their imaginations.

Catholics don't scream about Jesus, they scream about the bishop.

You have the feeling that if you get a Pulitzer, you're somehow set for life.

There's something about marriage that is not as intensely romantic or interesting as a couple's first meeting.