Jan Karon

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.

When I open many books, or most leading women's magazines, or see almost all TV shows, I don't find myself at all. I am completely anonymous. My value system is not there.

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

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

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

Cynics will say there are no good people out there. And if you read the papers and watch TV news you could be convinced of that. But there are good people.

The dark book has been terribly popular. Dark characters, dysfunction, and all sorts of things from reality that are true in our world.

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

Food is a great way of communicating.

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

This is a gift that God has given me. I'm not smart enough to write for everybody, but it's the love in these books that comes from Him and goes out to my reading audience. I'm forever grateful for that. It's a privilege.

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.

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

There's nothing trite about being consoled in a world that does everything in its power to deliver sorrow.

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

There are so many people who don't know small towns exist. When I write, I want to give my readers two things: one is a sense of consolation, and two, I want to make them laugh.

My first novel is loaded with food references largely because my cupboards were bare, and I was writing hungry.

I stepped out on faith to follow my lifelong dream of being an author. I made real sacrifices and took big risks. But living, it seems to me, is largely about risk.

So here is what my advice would be: If God has given you a dream, you'd better get cracking because He wants you to use it. That's why He gives them to us in the first place.

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

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

Well, I think some people are very happy in retirement. And in a year and a half I'm going to see how happy I feel in retirement. I'm just going to not work quite so hard, but I'll continue to write as long as God gives me breath.

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.

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.

I have raced against the clock since I went into advertising at the age of eighteen.