I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet.

After the phone call from The New Yorker, I walked more than a mile to church to thank God. But then I told God I would talk to Him another time and darted home.

I'd say my religious life has shaped my worldview; my writing, I'd say too, is an extension of the pulpit...it reaches folks who don't care for organized religion in a different way.

I'm happy if my book makes you want to kiss your family... if we can reconcile with each other no matter where we are on the globe.

I don't believe in the art-for-art's-sake philosophy. With the raw material before me and the gifts within me, I did my best to celebrate the voices and intelligence and sweetness and dreams of the children in spite of their chaotic, outer worlds.

I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet.

I believe that Jesus was both priest and poet. Imagine those powerful parables! My experience as a priest tells me it's not possible to reach the hearts of the congregants without a bit of poetry and storytelling.