I do like to explore evil characters in my books.

Reading a novel in which all characters illustrate patience, hard work, chastity, and delayed gratification could be a pretty dull experience.

I do try not to spend much time reading in the suspense genre.

I don't have dry seasons, because I don't allow them.

I had been writing fiction since I was in eighth grade, because I loved it.

If I don't have a project going, I sit down and begin to write something - a character sketch, a monologue, a description of some sight, or even just a list of ideas.

Yes, in my books I do edit myself to keep from becoming the Village Explainer.

Much of what we do in life has a huge component of luck.

I do want to write about Jane Whitefield again, but only when I have a good enough idea - something I've figured out about her that's news and that's worth a reader's time.

It's important, I think, for a writer of fiction to maintain an awareness of the pace and shape of the book as he's writing it. That is, he should be making an object, not chattering.

Contrary to what many writers imply about the process, nobody forces a writer to sell his work to the film industry.

Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration tomoral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually writtenin it?

He might not take their advice, but he took their temperature.

You're a poster boy for sincerity. You have all the guile of a lamb.

I wasn't wattching television when I was a youngster; there was the radio.

There's nothing I like more than a writer who can sing, or a musician who has a book out.

No action can be performed successfully without a clear result in view.

There is no way our little minds can comprehend the love of God. But that didn't keep him from coming.

Being alive is a common road. It's what we notice makes us different.

In that respect, Martin Luther King, whom A.J.[Muste] advised in the civil rights movement, was also a radical pacifist.

Creative power is that receptive attitude of expectancy which makes a mold into which the plastic yet undifferentiated substance can flow and take the desired form.