It's as if once you hit high school, you're programmed, like a robot, to be an asshole to your parents.

The kind of life I want is to be a person who would get a personal note every day.

My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through.

Remember that no matter where I am or what I'm doing I've got a special place inside me that's all for you. It's been there since the day we met.

The world was full of beauty. She wanted to grab hold of it and take it down into her bones. Yet always it seemed beyond her grasp. Sometimes only by a little, like now. The thinnest membrane. Usually, though, by miles. She couldn’t expect to be that kind of happy all the time. She knew that. But sometimes you could. Sometimes you should be allowed a tiny bit of joy that should stay with you for more than five minutes. That wasn’t too much to ask. To have a moment like this, and be able to hold on to it. To cross that membrane, and feel alive.

I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn't room for what I wanted to write.

Life needed a fast forward button. Because there were days you just don't want to live through, not again, but they kept coming around and you were powerless to stop time or speed it up or do anything to keep from having to face it.