When I was growing up, my mother worked, and in the evenings, the whole family would sit around the dinner table and recount the day.

Skeptical of strangers, lobstermen are keepers of secrets, working in the howling wind and hot sun, the icy snows, and bewildering fog. When I was growing up, the lore was that they had the right to shoot anyone who messed with their traps.

I dropped off my kids from 10 to 2, went to the library, and just wrote. This is my second career - I'm 41 - and I'm a terrible speller.

I didn't think anything I wrote was going to get published. I'm a dyslexic kid who had tutors through college. But I had a very strong impulse to write.

Every life is precious to God. God created every one of us. He gave us a soul, and that soul will live as long as God lives.

I think the key to passion, to zeal, is gratitude. Or to put it another way, the fuel to motivate is gratitude, and gratitude comes by just backing up a little and realizing how much you've sinned against God.

There is no work, however vile or sordid, that does not glisten before God.

A judge is not a god or a king. He has the last word most of the time, but sometimes, one makes mistakes.