Quotes from Steven James

We don't need to be taught to lie, or to be selfish or cruel or vindictive—we need to be taught how not to.

All of life is a complex game of strategy; moves, and countermoves, taking and losing pieces, setting up for the final

Jesus being born as a baby was God's way of laughing at a world trying to grow up too quickly.

And here is the truth from which all others grow; here is the spring from which all others flow: soon I will be dead. Soon, as measured by stardust and time. Soon as measured by comets and dreams. Soon. Soon. Soon, I will be dead. And here is the question that determines everything—what will I do until then?.

We want to pin a reason to it or else we get terrified anyone else might do the same thing. Including us.

What would it be like to think what a gerbil thinks, from a gerbil's point of view? Kind of like Thomas Nigel's 1974 paper, 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' There's a subjective character of experience that's never captured in reductive accounts. Know what I mean?' 'Um . . . Sure.

God can handle all your needs, mend the heart that hurts and bleeds, give the lonely something true that changes lives and makes them new. Jesus heals the fractured soul, makes it breathe, makes it whole, gives us hope when hope is gone, breaks the darkness, offers dawn, to all who follow, all who dare— the door is open, love is there.

Part of living is acknowledging people's pain and grief, but not letting it take over your heart. Though it's always nighttime in the depths, the waves still reflect the day.

I can't think of any other field in which people who aren't experts critique other people who aren't experts in the hope of everyone becoming an expert.

Organic writers are never directionless because we can always work on scenes that fulfill the promises we've made earlier in the story or go back and foreshadow the fulfillment of promises we think of as the story takes shape.

There are some questions, after all, that we never get answers to. Some doors remain locked forever, and that's life.

Don't try to be different or memorable with your storytelling voice—be authentic.

finding God brings meaning into every moment—I

Live each moment, each precious moment that you have. Live each one as if it were your last. And your first. Miss

He said souls can be just as bloody and torn up as bodies can. He called it the other kind of violence.

We want the benefits of intimacy without the risks of transparency. So our lives are always made up of games of hide-and-seek. We want to be found and yet we want to hide from the consequences of being found. Intimacy is the license that you give to someone else to hurt you the most.

If you're writing a full-length novel, you don't need to bend over backward trying to be clever in the first line or two. Readers will understand that there's a lot of story to tell, and they'll give you some space to do that. Don't rush the opening.

to be a fiction writer, you also need to be a psychologist (understanding people's personalities and intentions), a philosopher (asking big questions about meaning and human nature), and a poet (breathing life into your words and the spaces between them).

Tryphena?" "It's Greek. Means 'delicate.' Brin came across it the other day somewhere in the Bible,

The true nature of man left to himself without restraint is not nobility but savagery

Emptiness where you wouldn't expect it speaks to you.

GPS on the molecular level.

Guatemalan Antigua.

To uncover the plot of your story, don't ask what should happen, but what should go wrong. To uncover the meaning of your story, don't ask what the theme is, but rather, what is discovered. Characters making choices to resolve tension—that's your plot. If your protagonist has no goal, makes no choices, has no struggle to overcome, you have no plot.