Quotes from Charles Martin

To us—those who seek the solace of the marsh—it is a stage where God paints—yellow in the morning, green toward noon, brownish in the afternoon, and blood red toward evening. It is the sentinel that stands guard at the ocean's edge, protecting the sea from the runoff that would kill it. It is a selfless and sacrificial place. And when I close my eyes, it is also the smell of home.

Don't get axle-wrapped 'bout what you can't control. You'll get your chance. Your job is to make the most of it when you do.

In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. —C. S. Lewis

One of the mysteries of music is that two can achieve together what one never could do alone. The effect is exponential. It's also the only activity on Planet Earth that can transport those who hear it

Said Dad was a tent peg for a lot of people, but she was his.

If God was down here drinking His coffee, then He was on his second cup, because He'd already Windexed the sky. Only the streaks remained.

Writers are not like other people. We are the piece-keepers. We gather and guard. Holding fast

And they ate supper before they said grace.

throughout all eternity the discarded pieces that whisper the majesty and wonder of what is. What was. And the ever-elusive and exceedingly dangerous truth: what could be. We alone carry and share them. Carving pieces into letters that make up the words that heal us.

Play simple, and people will join in. Sing along. Which, by the way, is the goal. Our job is to put a song in their mouths and let them sing it back to us. That's all that really matters." Then he added, "The great players aren't great because of all the notes they can play, but because of the ones they don't play.

And neither are you. So, if your mind is telling you that God slipped up and might have made one giant mistake when it comes to you, you remember the firefly's butt." The

they walk the hurting from broken to not. From unable to breathe to laughing. From sickness of the soul to tears dripping off the corners of a smile. From lost to known and accepted in the knowing. This is the matchless and

immeasurable power of our words.

For we alone are the keepers of the letters that set us free.

My father used to hire men with troubled pasts. Prison. Everything. Give them a second chance when no one else would. One of them—a murderer—asked him one time while they were picking beans shoulder to shoulder, 'How does a man wipe his life clean?' You know what my

father said to that man?" I shook my head. "He said, 'With the one that you have.

Along the bank, the cicadas tuned up, singing their singular psychedelic tune.

Someone speaks whose we are, and out of that we become who we are.

Spotlight the song and give it back to people. Put it in their mouths. Songs don't belong to us. A song is a light we shine on others, not a light we shine on us.

Brothers and sisters, a demon's job is to kill you. To beat you to death. To rob you of anything that is not painful. This railing is where you give more than you take. Where you steal back. Where you kill what's killing you. Then, having chased and slain, you return"—Pastor John pointed to the pews and folding chairs—"bloody but unharmed, different but the same, changed but unchanged, moved but unmoved. A living battleground.

My job was to create a shelf, a platform. Scaffolding. To fill the air around her with a structure. Something safe.

And farmers, those whose lives are connected to the lake yet uninterested in it, sit atop green or red tractors beneath dusty brimmed hats, roll cigarettes, and pull at the earth for one more year like a pig suckling the hind teat.

Story is the bandage of the broken. Sutures of the shattered. The tapestry upon which we write our lives. Upon which we lay the bodies of the dying and the about-to-come-to-life. And if it's honest, true, hiding nothing, revealing all, then it is a raging river and those who ride it find they have something to give—that they are not yet empty. Critics

Anytime you start singing Johnny Cash, you're walking on hallowed ground.