“I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.”

“I would probably have to say that reading fiction — those stories fill the space that other people might use religious stories for. The bulk of what I know about human life I’ve gotten from novels. And I think the thing about novels that make them important to the people who love them is that there’s always another perspective.”

“I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.”

“When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.”

“Laurie herself was more focused on the years when her kids were little, when she felt so necessary and purposeful, a battery all charged up with love. Every day she used it up and every night it got miraculously replenished. Nothing had ever been as good as that.”

“Quite a metaphor. The person in the most pain wins. Does that mean I get a Blue Ribbon?”

“He knew for a fact that it was possible to fall and just keep falling.”

“It’s a matter of dignity,” the Chief explained. “At a certain point, that’s all you have left.”

“Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.”

“Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.”

“That’s why we get involved with other people, right? Not just for their bodies, but for everything else, too – their dreams and their scars and their stories.”