Quotes from Jan Karon

I worried too much about what others thought—I can tell you it's a tragic waste of time and energy and pokes God in the eye.

Love is an actual need, an urgent requirement of the heart," he read aloud from an old essay on marriage that he found in his files. "Every properly constituted human being who entertains an appreciation of loneliness...and looks forward to happiness and content feels the necessity of loving. Without it, life is unfinished...

In his bachelor's heart of hearts, he loved pie with an intensity that alarmed him. Yet, when he was offered seconds, he usually refused. "Wouldn't you like another piece of this nice coconut pie, Father?" he might be asked. "No, I don't believe I'd care for anymore," he'd say. An outright lie!

Lord, make me a blessing to someone today

God wastes nothing.

I learned not to be so bitterly defeated when my fiction took a beating from editors. I learned in advertising to color in the lines and have my work done on time and to make it the very best it could be.

I live in a village where people still care about each other, largely.

Writing is a way of processing our lives. And it can be a way of healing.

There may be circumstances in this life that God uses to keep bringing us back to Him, looking for His grace.

Bottom line, wasn't life itself a special occasion?

There was a lot of brokenness in my family. Let's just say that I was raised by my grandparents.

My life is extremely full and wretchedly busy, and I feel that while my life drains energy from my work, my work in turn drains energy from my life. The result is, I am always playing catch-up spiritually. That is my thorn.

I really care about my readers. I care about anyone who reads my books.

I grew up hearing words like snakeroot, sassafras, mullein - things that had wondrous, mysterious sounds in their names.

For a very long time, I wrote a book a year, and was eager and willing to do it, to put bread on the table, to have my work out there. Now I must write a book every two years, and that's never enough time, either.

The significant, life-forming times are the dull, in-between times.

Why can't life always be lived under the stars, ' she said, 'with great music and family and friends?

I remember the first time I held my book, my first book in my hands. I cannot tell you how it moved me.

Love is an endless act of forgiveness.

So many people don't know that God loves them. They feel, 'Why would God love me? Why would He be interested in me?

My grandmother influenced me so deeply.

I've put everything I had and I've given my readers 120 percent, and that's the truth.

I try to put my heart out there to everybody. They don't have to be Christian. For example, I have lots of Jewish readers. I love my Jewish readers.

Let me say that I absolutely loved writing 'A Common Life,' because it was a book about love.