“I'm a novelist. Anything you say can be taken down and used against you in a work of fiction.”

“You can get used to eating breakfast with a man in a fedora. You can get used to anything, my mother was in the habit of saying.”

“When you suffer, you are being conformed to the image of Jesus. When you pray, you are being made holy in the image of Jesus. When you quietly serve a person in need, you are being shaped into the image of Jesus. When you generously give, your heart is being remade into the image of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.”

“No one has expressed it better than a great novelist I heard once on a talk show who said something like "You want to know the price I pay for being a writer? Okay, I'll tell you. I travel by plane a great deal. And I'm usually seated next to some huge businessman who works on files or his laptop computer for a while, and then notices me and asks me what I do. And I say I'm a writer. Then there's always a terrible silence. Then he says eagerly, 'Have you written anything I might have heard of?”

“You and I are part of the colony of heaven. Right now, we may reside here on earth, but our passport indicates that our citizenship is in heaven. We are on the earth, but not of the earth.”

“Suffering often draws us closer to God. Instead of being a sign of God's punishment or distance, suffering can purify us, lead us into the heart of God, and transform our souls.”

“You can do anything, but not everything.”