I'll write about California someday, I imagine, but I don't know when.

Susan Rebecca White has a keen sense for how her characters talk and think. An impressive debut.

Of course I'd sometimes have characters from downstate living upstate, but it took a while for me to start writing about where I grew up.

When I teach, I try to assign writers from whom I can learn.

I think it's probably better to make a region your own, and then maybe you can go somewhere else, but a lot of great writers have stuck to one region.

I believe that we can access stories, and voices from those around us, more easily often than from our own imperfect memories.

I think narrators expect a high level of intimacy with their readers, and vice versa.

I tend to listen to my friends and family empathetically, and I try to help work through their problems from the inside. I try to adopt their thinking.

I think the voice can carry a story.

I'm always relearning things I thought I'd learned for good a while back.

I'm suspicious of epiphanies, because they so rarely last.

Treat people like they are who they should be and you will help them to become all that they can be.

The soul awakes ... between two dim eternities - the eternal past, the eternal future.

But I accepted that because God gave me other qualities and I’m grateful.

In Indiana, the Affordable Care Act will raise the average cost of health insurance in the individual market by an unaffordable 72 percent.

I am delighted at Des's support in these elections. And thank him for his rewrite of the lyrics of Send in the Clowns which we are planning to sing at our South East conference.

Listening to other people's needs is listening to God. Noticing simple, natural beauty, hearing music, even confronting the challenge of pain and problems - that can all be listening to God too.

For myself, I have but little confidence in any business, or enterprise, or investment, that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders.

As a rule, I don't worry about genre. I just want to tell a good story, with characters that interest me and my readers.

Because my hands are rough and wrinkley, they are my least favourite feature. An ex-boyfriend used to call them 'Freddy Kreuger' fingers.

Ninety-nine percent of everything you do in life is attitude. If you have a relationship with God...you're going to learn to ask the one question in life that covers everything: How can I help you?