“Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.”

The thing is, it’s my own fault. I just can’t put up with a person that won’t go out of his way for me. And that’s what a man is. Somebody that won’t go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary.

Given my own circumstances, I find that anything can turn out to belong nearly anywhere.

To people who think of themselves as God’s houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyond belief. Or stupid. A nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. Assuming the land could also forget what had been done to it.

Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.

There’s always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.

I didn’t study writing in school, I studied biology as an undergraduate and graduate student. So I think that I write fiction in the scientific way. I love invention, obviously; I love creation of character. But I do feel very rooted in the real world, even in the way that I create characters.

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

But kids don’t stay with you if you do it right. It’s the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won’t be needed in the long run.

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.

One of the very first things I figured out about life…is that it’s better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you’re hopeful, you have more fun.

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history… Listen being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different though. You could say the view is larger.

I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.

He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.

I don’t understand how any good art could fail to be political.

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

Calvin: ME TARZAN! KING OF JUNGLE! Suzy: Nice underpants. Does your mom know you’re over here like this? Calvin:…I don’t think Jane EVER said that to Tarzan.

When we pursue kingdom principles above His presence, we are looking for the kingdom without a king.

The source of inward happiness which shall outlast the earth– To them e’en kings should yield the palm, and own their higher worth.

With the Rhythm Kings, I can involve myself in arranging and producing the music as well as the choice of songs.

Rule with the heart of a servant. Serve with the heart of a king.

God has aroused the spirit of kings and princes to root up from the earth the enemies of the Christian name. Therefore gird yourselves manfully and take up joyful arms for the name of Christ.

The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king.

Don King sucks…Don King sucks…Don King sucks.