Great wealth often curses all who touch it.
Writing a book set in New Mexico was partially a way to express my own love for the state, and partially a way to prudently follow the advice to write what you know.
I find that time constraints actually make me more productive, and "real world" experiences provide a lot of inspiration to write.
I tend to only write productively for one to two hours per day, so there is plenty of time left over for me to work a day job!
When I finished the book [The Dissemblers], I sent it to one billion agents, and got one billion rejections.
I hope to work through disappointment and frustration with as much grace as [Georgia] O'Keeffe did, and I hope to have the same confidence in my own vision.
Yet [Georgia O'Keeffe ] always stayed true to her vision, and was at times uncompromising in following the path she saw for herself.
I'm not being analytical. I just create everything intuitively. If you're too analytical, what you're doing probably ends up being too specific.
Worship is why we are born and why we are born again.
That's what the liveliest parts of the world Church today - ranging from the booming Church in Africa to FOCUS missionaries on American campuses - are living: a Catholicism that has discovered that it doesn't have a mission, it is a mission.
Our nostalgic dreams of perfection thrive just as dangerously in the other direction too, in the imaginary future, that bold and tantalizing future where the troubles of today will be cured by a tomorrow, and all our losses will be recouped, our problems solved, our lives restored, our people made whole again, etc.