“Notable characters do not alone bear trouble; they use it.”

“I used to send my characters into a fire that necessarily consumed them, but I have learned, a little, how to send them through the fire to a new place. The characters who do not change — most notably Nakota in Cipher, Bibi in Skin, and Lena in Kink — are motivated by an essential selfishness or self-centeredness, an unwillingness to relinquish control to the process, a refusal to become.”

“I do not use profanity in my novels. My characters all go to church.”

“Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?”

“The personal desolation Christ is experiencing on the cross is what you and I should be experiencing--but instead, Jesus is bearing it, and bearing it all alone.Why alone?He's alone so that we might never be alone.”

“A bear took a walk in a deep dark woodAnd stopped just where a Rabbit stood“Do you have trouble with stinky poo Sticking to your fur when you go to the loo?”Said the big brown bear to the small white hare.The rabbit pointed his nose to the sky "Trouble with poo! Oh no not I"“Good” said the bear “then if you don’t mind?”Picked up the bunny and wiped his behind”