to be a fiction writer, you also need to be a psychologist (understanding people's personalities and intentions), a philosopher (asking big questions about meaning and human nature), and a poet (breathing life into your words and the spaces between them).

Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

You must know that you are worth much to me whether you accomplish anything or not. Even if you are rejected in the world's eyes, you are valuable to me.

My dreams had to be His dreams, the ones He placed in my heart. They couldn't be the ones I thought I should have, or needed for the purpose of making other people like me.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

Well, when you do something like Rocky which is indefinable somehow, it always becomes difficult to lose that.

When we look at history, we see history is made up of the heroes of their times. Yet, somehow we miss this when we put on the lens of the Scriptures.

You have to be someone.

I'd love to be the female Kanye. I think he's so cool and effortless.

Sometimes, my books start with a scene I see in my mind, such as a woman in a wedding dress running away from her wedding like in 'Embers of Love.' Sometimes, a book can start with a character.

Contrary to the assumptions of Western moral traditions, human beings are (1) not free in their actions but governed by necessity; (2) not transparent to themselves and others in their motivations, but opaque; (3) not similar to each other and therefore subject to the same moral code, but each different.

The parts of fiction are the various steps that the author takes to develop his plot—the details of characterization and incident.