For that story, I took as my subject a young woman whom I got to know over the course of a couple of visits. I never saw her having any health problems - but I knew she wanted to be married.

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing

Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

Should it matter what genre it is if the book is good?

Out of all the things that look & bleed, the most bruised is a man who has seen his dreams crushed and experienced miserable hopelessness.

Curiosity is the offspring of mystery. For without mystery there be no need for curiosity. Curiosity is the search for the things that can be, it is the inspiration of the true adventurer.

I played back every empty sigh, every night I slept alone, and saw what I never wanted to see before - a lost girl crying out to me for help. I just noticed too late.

I always thought communism was crap, really.

Jesus has not given us options to consider. He has given us commands to obey.

We want to achieve a stable, peaceful world with less conflict and more common ground.

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig.

You get whatever you expect to get. The only question is. What do you want?

There is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual.