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.

Most people like a little sex in their novels.

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

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

When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'

They don't have a lot of crime in the countryside other than theft. But every once in a while, things turn ugly, and when they turn ugly, they turn very ugly.

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.