Whatever we focus on determines what we become.
Just go outside and look at something and write it down and you'll find it is a very nice piece of writing.
When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'
With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.
They don't have a lot of crime in the countryside other than theft. But every once in a while, things turn ugly, and when they turn ugly, they turn very ugly.
Nuts don’t come in bunches. Only grapes do.
As an individual with my own hurts, I go into the Garden (Gethsemane) as often as I need to. There I identify with the pain in the other, with my part in that pain, my part in tempting someone to wound me. I experience the other's pain, and God's pain, and am devastated - because their pain becomes my own. Feeling such anguish, I can forgive, or deeply repent, either for myself or on behalf of the other.
Out in the Pool certain other boats caught the eye. . . each carried a bright fire amidships, in a brazier, beside a man, two small barrels of beer, and a very large handbell. The men were purlmen, Grandfather Nat told me, selling hot beer in the cold mornings - to the men on the colliers, or on any other craft thereabout.
The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become the majority view in some distant future.
To dare: that is the whole secret of revolutions.
Some people get the wrong idea, you know. If you're quiet and you're just not the most gregarious person, that you're like. . I don't know, self-involved, rude possibly, frigid. I get that a lot from people who don't know me, like online all you guys think I never smile, ever. It's not true. I do smile sometimes.