For me, writing something down was the only road out.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.

I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I’ve been closer to him for that reason.

I want you all to stand; will you do that for me, please?

I fear it’s because religion is man’s attempt to reach God, and when he feels he has succeeded, he cannot abide anyone else’s claim to have done the same.

It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.

If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you...

On the one hand, shopping is dependable: You can do it alone, if you lose your heart to something that is wrong for you, you can return it; it’s instant gratification and yet something you...

Words fashioned with somewhat over precise diction are like shapes turned out by a cookie cutter.

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.

Having reached the halfway mark in the alphabet, my prime focus is on writing each new book as well as I can.

I passed the Bar on the first shot, But I have never practiced law.

I love being a writer, what I can’t stand is the paperwork.

We have to become saints. We have to become like Christ. Anything less is simply not enough.

There may be writing groups where people meet but it’s occasional. You really do it all at your own computer or your own typewriter by yourself.

I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?

No life is so hard that you can’t make it easier by the way you take it.

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

This isn’t a watercolor, it’s a mural.

People want to find out what happens to the characters, and want to keep reading, and turning the pages.

And I find – I’m 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn’t diminished any. That’s the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.

I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and I’m enjoying it.

Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.

Nothing to be done really about animals. Anything you do looks foolish. The answer isn’t in us. It’s almost as if we’re put here on earth to show how silly they aren’t.

I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?

Kinsey was never a lawyer. She’s strictly blue collar.

I was one of the first generations to watch television. TV exposes people to news, to information, to knowledge, to entertainment. How is it bad?

I can’t get very far away from Christianity, I can’t get very far away from the angels and the saints. I work them in always, in some way.

I’ve always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in....

She worded it a bit strongly, but I do find myself more and more struck by the differences between the sexes. To put it another way: All marriages are mixed marriages.

Traveling is seeing; it is the implicit that we travel by.

People marry for a variety of reasons and with varying results. But to marry for love is to invite inevitable tragedy.

Left Behind takes what to some people may be unbelievable predictions from the Bible and shows how they might play out. It makes the events of biblical prophecy understandable and thus believable.

Good fiction must be entertaining, but what makes fiction special – and True – is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message.

You know, people think you have to be dumb to skip rope for 45 minutes. No, you have to be able to imagine something else. While you’re skipping rope, you have to be able to...

Some people with awful cards can be successful because of how they deal with the tragedies they’re handed, and that seems courageous to me.

I have always preferred conflict of individuals over the battle of extreme ideologies.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.

We’re comic. We’re all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

There was a time when nails were high-tech. There was a time when people had to be told how to use a telephone. Technology is just a tool. People use tools to improve their lives.

I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was wonderful.

It is tragic that many in America think of us – Christians – as being people who hate others.

I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble – some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves – but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the...

One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are.

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

I want you to hear a new version of Dueling Banjos. Anyone else is welcome.

I love inventing worlds and characters and settings and scenarios.

I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave – and nothing but laughter to console them with.

Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.