Do you all have a living room floor or a bedroom floor? Then you can write a book.

Anyone who has problems, or worries, anyone who laughs and cries, anyone who feels can write. It's only talking on paper... talking about the things that matter to us.

I loved teaching. It was my world. I only left because I was overwhelmed with three careers - teaching, writing, and my family.

Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

To me, family is everything. I want children to realize how important their families are and what a support system a family is.

Everything in my life affects my writing. There are no separate parts of my life.

Many times in my life I've been upset about something and said to myself, "Will this matter in two years?" Not even in two months.

I myself was terrified during the Second World War. The war started when I was six, and I was so sure that we were going to be bombed and killed. My imagination is my biggest plus and my worst minus.

I have no special talent, you know. I never took a writing course before I began to write.

Outside of family, writing is essential. To me, it's like breathing.

I cannot outline. I do not know what the next thing is going to happen in the book until it comes out of my fingers.

The romantic within us is a harbinger of our deepest desires.

Scriptures may have grains of historical truth within them, but there is also ample hyperbole, speculation and mythology.

The Western church needs to regain its confidence in the role of outsiders, relocators who come in humility and grace to learn first and then to offer a different perspective.

Notes don't make music until you learn to insert silence between them.

So mightiest powers buy deepest calms are fed, And sleep, how oft, in things that gentlest be!

I should never seek a job in my life, my mission in life is to create jobs. I am not a job seeker, I am a job giver.

No deals with the Tories; it's war.

When I was a kid, my mother used to feed me mashed-potato sandwiches, brussel sprout sandwiches; my brain cells were starving from lack of food. I'll eat anything. I'll eat dirt.

Is America truly a democracy? Has America ever been a democracy with the institution of slavery?

For we put the power in the people.