... the object of learning was not to build a better mousetrap but to ask a better question.

When I read students’ attempts at creative writing it is obvious immediately that most of them have not read much or widely. The aspiring writer must read everything he or she can to appreciate the myriad ways words are used and to what effect.

Faith is not something that one has faith is something that one practices at the very moment in your life when you really don't believe anything, and you're in the worst kind of despair.

Being a failure at living your own life as best as you can is better than being a success living the life somebody else says you should live.

How can I love you if I don't know what hurts you?

Books, and especially fiction, do not proceed from ideas. They are born from feelings

Some wounds go so deep that you don't even feel them until months, maybe years, later.

To write and not tell the truth? That would be death for any writer. But more, it would be death to the imagination. And if the imagination dies, what would happen to the souls of children?

The young accept the extraordinary as normal because they do not compare their lives with those of others when everyone is like them.

I write because the lives of all of us are stories. If enough of those stories are told, then perhaps we will begin to see that our lives are the same story. The differences are merely in the details.

A good teacher is one who helps you become who you feel yourself to be. A good teacher is also one who says something that you won't understand until 10 years later.

Just because she's dead it doesn't mean I stopped loving her or that she stopped loving me. It's just her body that left. The love didn't. —Jenna Richards

I'm tired of thinking and I'm really tired of Feeling. —Jenna Richards

But there are times when a tree can no longer withstand the pain inflicted on it, and the wind will take pity on that tree and topple it over in a mighty storm. All the other trees who witnessed the evil look down upon the fallen tree with envy. They pray for the day when a wind will end their suffering. I pray for the day when God will end mine.

Freeform radio is an art form. The airwaves are the empty canvas, the producer is the artist, and the sound is the paint.