“The good things that happen to us were meant to happen, and the bad things that happen are lessons meant to teach us to be better.”

It doesn’t. What matters is what you make. Whether it’s a cake for bingo night or a costume for a saint or a wall of water-whatever you pour into this life is what makes you rich.

If there is one thing I hope my books do always and forever, its that they honor working people.

Same is true of liking a boy. If you cut off the thoughts, if you stop pinning, you’re free to find a boy who is attainable.

I even love the smell of books.

This should tell you everything you need to know about guys.

But I learned that art can be found in all of life, even in pain.

So for them 15 years is a blink of an eye. I am nothing but grateful.

I have candles going, and small objects that remind me of what I am working on, or bring me into the world of the character.

When I see it lumbering down the mountain road like a tank . . . I flag it down like an old friend. I’ve waited on this corner every Friday since I can remember.

I am no trouble at all. You could press me into dough and make sugar cookies out of me, I’ve been so sweet.

Regardless of whether they loved us back or treated us fairly or understood our shortcomings.

To fail and succeed and flourish and fly.

I adored the Iranian sisters, Marjan, Bahar and Layla, who are looking to build a life, start a business and find love in a place so far from home.

People have often told me that one of their strongest childhood memories is the scent of their grandmother’s house.

The wedding vows are a license to be a complete jerk.

I don’t even like the sound of the dryer going – I like the quiet.

I’m happy to say she was laughing while she said it, but she meant it. I’ve never learned to be a candle burning in an empty room. So I go on the screen, and I say whatever I’m told to say.

This, I thought, is what is meant by ‘thy will be done’ in the Lord’s Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it.

I had come to a place where I was meant to be. I don’t mean anything so prosaic as a sense of coming home. This was different, very different. It was like arriving at a place much safer than home.

It’s no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, ‘Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.’ By then, pigs will be your style.

I don’t really act. I say the words the way I would say them if I meant them.

It doesn’t matter what people say. I have been face to face with some of the most trying moments of men’s lives when it meant so much to me if I kept the vision, and if I held fast to that which God had said. A man must be in an immovable condition.

Rock music is not meant to be perfect.

No man wants to settle down. It happens. Eventually you’re going to bump into somebody that makes you go, ‘Hmm, I don’t mind seeing this person every day.’