Maybe if we can find time to hug and cherish our families and the people around us, child suicide or college suicide wouldn't be rampant.

I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet.

I'm happy if my book makes you want to kiss your family... if we can reconcile with each other no matter where we are on the globe.

I'd say my religious life has shaped my worldview; my writing, I'd say too, is an extension of the pulpit...it reaches folks who don't care for organized religion in a different way.

After the phone call from The New Yorker, I walked more than a mile to church to thank God. But then I told God I would talk to Him another time and darted home.

I always felt my writing could benefit from the attention of established writers. I knew my work could grow and be better.

The inner revolution will not be televised or sold on the Internet. It must take place within one's own mind and heart.

Leading a nation requires sacrifice

Anyone who thinks impressions of old movie actors is funny absolutely cannot be trusted. I think it's like a law of nature.

I want to live till I die. No more, no less.

I know that I'm very lucky to be alive. For 35 or 40 years I've spilt my blood and broke my bones and spent years in hospitals.

If you want to see the big stuff that God has, you've got to take some risk and trust only in the Gospel.

The universe will always remove what is no longer serving you.

Most of my relatives are police marksmen, apart from my grandad who was a bank robber. He died recently, surrounded by his family.

True patriotism doesn't exclude an understanding of the patriotism of others.

Oh, I have roamed o'er many lands, And many friends I've met; Not one fair scene or kindly smile Can this fond heart forget.