«We at this church will not perform the civil unions of same-sex couples because it would be un-Biblical to do so.»

«I didn't expect to be up here. I'm quite humbled by this and the main reason I'm humbled is that there were four others who could easily be up here; that humbles me. We have so many good writers in this country.»

«It's somewhat of a contradiction, ... I guess the quieter the voice, the more necessary it is to push it. It's not going to leap out at you and scream. I also can't control how a book is marketed. To say the book marketing is aggressive, fine, I'm happy with that. Push the book. That doesn't mean that my personality or writing style changes.»

«I've always been interested in the emotion of longing,»

«On the literal level, Ada is looking for her father. Charles's search is more psychological. Physically, he's looking for the village [where he killed a Vietnamese child point-blank]. By extension, if he finds the village, he thinks something will happen and he'll be absolved -- find completion. I suppose it's symbolic of what happened to him in Vietnam. Ada is still looking for what he was. . . . One can never find certainty but that won't stop her from trying. The quest beyond finding him physically is to discover where he comes from, where he's been, what happened to him and by extension what happened to her.»