To grow up is to find the small part you are playing in the extraordinary drama written by somebody else.

Reading is a creative activity. You have to visualize the characters, you have to hear what the voices sound like.

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

If we don't pray according to the needs of the heart, we repress our deepest longings. Our prayers may not be rational, and we may be quite aware of that, but if we repress our needs, then those unsaid prayers will fester.

Accepting that we are angry is a healthy and appropriate response as long as we don't get stuck in it. Acknowledging it is one way of going through it.

I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.

Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go.