You can't spend your whole life in front of a screen.

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.

Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

You are always someones favorite unfolding story

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.

The work that we do is so tricky because it rests on our shoulders, but it's also collaborative and part of it is trusting the people that you're working with.

I know that an important message is not a novel. To say that we should all be kind to our neighbors is an important statement; it's not a novel.

He [Tim Matheson] is such a - he's not like [Ronald] Reagan - but he's so commanding of respect but he's also so sweet.

You have to just look at it like Titanic: I know the ship sinks, but this is a love story

It’s mostly just you have to convince yourself that there’s nothing else in the room but John Lennon and suddenly things start John Lennon-ing!

Self belief will always push fear away, but you need to always practice self belief otherwise fear will come back and tap you on the shoulder.

God makes us as broken bread and poured-out wine to please Him. Beware of competing calls once the call of God grips you.

We are born of risen apes, not fallen angels.

Any setting can potentially acquire this vividness. It slowly arrives during the period of research, until it is as immediate to me as my own real surroundings.

Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand. Only dreams give birth to change.