Just go outside and look at something and write it down and you'll find it is a very nice piece of writing.

When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'

With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.

Nuts don’t come in bunches. Only grapes do.

They don't have a lot of crime in the countryside other than theft. But every once in a while, things turn ugly, and when they turn ugly, they turn very ugly.

There's something about marriage that is not as intensely romantic or interesting as a couple's first meeting.

I've always been sort of interested in the rural countryside. Things happen out there that are very strange to city dwellers.

Catholics don't scream about Jesus, they scream about the bishop.

Most people who are trying to write kind of sit in their basements and pull it out of their imaginations.

You have the feeling that if you get a Pulitzer, you're somehow set for life.

Gonna rain like a cow pissin' on a flat rock" [drugstore clerk to detective Virgil Flowers] Dark of the Moon, p.7

Personal responsibility leads to national transformation.

She wore her battle scars like wings, looking at her you would never know that once upon a time she forgot how to fly

Sometimes I feel so helpless and inadequate, and wonder if I have done enough to make the Gospel clear. But I also know that only the Holy Spirit can open others’ eyes to the truth.

He kissed me. He kissed me like a thousand promises were being exchanged through that one kiss.

So who is cruel? You, cruel reader, you are.

Always distance yourself from gossip because it's the worst form of self-disruption.

I was one of the serious studiers. I'm not somebody who just shows up and gets a hundred on a test.

Action films are emotionally and physically draining, and you're dirty and sweaty. In a romantic comedy, you have to have your fingernails perfect, you're in air-conditioned rooms the whole time.

The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty, but to have a slave of his own.

You need to feel that you're making a difference.