"I never saw any of my dad's stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts."

"I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody."

"You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you."

"When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, 'Why god? Why me?' and the thundering voice of God answered, 'There's just something about you that pisses me off.'"

"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

"The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute little poems, nice cards or embracing trees and being nice to little lapdogs."

"The greatest deception is forgetting that every challenge is an invitation to grow stronger."

"The art of living is discovering that every challenge is an invitation to grow stronger."