It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words.

I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words.

It wasn't until I was 26 or 25 when I started sending work out to magazines.

I feel like it has gone very fast for me, but I feel like it wasn't instantaneous, at all. I was getting a lot of rejections. I just got very lucky and it happened quickly for me. I don't feel like I'm a prodigy or something.

I never played inside as a kid - even in the rain I'd go out.

I've been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff.

I do fish. I think there is a connection between thinking and fishing mostly because you spend a lot of time up to your waist in water without a whole lot to keep your mind busy.

I always told my dad I'd play professional football.

I guess you could say I've been writing all my life.

Travel definitely affects me as a writer.

I write reviews of science books for the Boston Globe, so I like to give science books.

You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't.

My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.

For me it was perfect, because it wasn't a very competitive environment, and it was a studio program. They basically send you off, and say, bring us some work, and we'll help you improve it. It really rewarded self-discipline.

Short stories are wonderful and extremely challenging, and the joy of them, because it only takes me three or four months to write, I can take more risks with them. It's just less of your life invested.

But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.

It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words.

Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you: The world doesn't care all that much if you live or die.

I found my first novel difficult. I don't want to make it sound like it's any more difficult than driving a cab or going to any other job, but there are so many opportunities for self-doubt, that you just kind of need to soldier on.

That something so small could be so beautiful. Worth so much. Only the strongest people can turn away from feelings like that.

Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen... yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.

Even as a coin attains its full value when it is spent, so life attains its supreme value when one knows how to forfeit it with grace when the time comes.

I know, to banish anger altogether from one's breast is a difficult task. It cannot be achieved through pure personal effort. It can be done only by God's grace.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.

Grace is given of god, but knowledge is bought in the market.

Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; if not, by any means get wealth and place.

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

One may preach a covenant of grace more clearly than another... But when they preach a covenant of works for salvation, that is not truth.

I have a musical called Goodbye and Good Luck, based on a Grace Paley short story. I also have King Island Christmas, and there are 20 different productions of it this year.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

To hit bottom is to fall from grace.

Science, which is not so attached to 'truth' as it once was, ut more to immediate 'effectiveness', is now drifting towards a decline, it's civic fall from grace.

But Patsy, she was a great, great girl. And Brenda Lee is a wonderful person, and her mama Grace. I've known those folks for years and years and years.

Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel.

Now being in such grace and favor by reason I learned him some points of geometry and understanding of the art of mathematics with other things, I pleased him so that what I said he would not contrary.

The signs of outstanding leadership appear primarily among the followers. Are the followers reaching their potential? Are they learning? Serving? Do they achieve the required results? Do they change with grace? Manage conflict?

Sin does not stop God's grace from flowing, but God's grace will stop sin.

We went on stage with the Jefferson Airplane, Jim started singing with Grace Slick and hugging her. Then he danced off the stage, went back into the dressing room and passed out cold.

Believe in God, for with the grace of God the American rockets will go astray and we will be saved.

Great comforts do, indeed, bear witness to the truth of thy grace, but not to the degree of it; the weak child is oftener in the lap than the strong one.

The grace of God is courtesy.

Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends, will have an end; whereas that which is founded on true virtue, will always continue.

A singer starts by having his instrument as a gift from God... When you have been given something in a moment of grace, it is sacrilegious to be greedy.

Quality in a classical Greek sense is how to live with grace and intelligence, with bravery and mercy.

Millions of hells of sinners cannot come near to exhaust infinite grace.

After deep exercise of soul I was brought by grace to feel I could entirely.

Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be woman. Much of her grace is in her frailty.

There is a grace of life which is still yours, my dear Europe.

G is Grace, the Flaming Star is the Torch of Reason. Those who possess this knowledge are indeed Illuminati.