Every day after lunch when I was writing my first book, I'd nibble a square of fine chocolate and meditate on all that had gone into its creation: the sun and rain that spilled on the cocoa plant, the soil that nourished it, the hands that picked the beans, and so on. My taste of chocolate became a lesson on the interconnectedness of things, and the infinite blessings for which I am grateful.

Without dignity, identity is erased.

I'm attracted to subjects who overcome tremendous suffering and learn to cope emotionally with it

His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.

I look at the film as an opportunity to see some bountifully creative minds do something that I could not do - tell the story with images. I can't wait to see what they do.

What God asks of men, said [Billy] Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of that faith. To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.

Honestly, I expected to get a cold reception because of my subject matter. But when editors took a look at the story I had to tell, and saw that this was not a parochial story at all, they really warmed to it