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But you cannot expect every writer to dwell on human suffering. I think my books do deal with grave issues. People who say they are too positive probably haven't read them.

People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

It's often said that everybody has a story to tell, and I suppose that's true, but the problem is that most of them aren't worth telling.

A lot of people are not interested in stories in which they don't see themselves.

What I've learned is that the most troublesome people don't tell you 100% of the story, and keep some facts to themselves. They just don't give you the full picture, and that's very worrisome to me.

Let's use our stories to encourage listening to one another and to hear not just the good news, but also the pain that lies at the back of a lot of people's stories and histories.

We can't constantly tell stories of heroes. We have to hear the other stories, too, about people in dire straits who make bad choices.

I don't want to make any general statements, but I feel like so many stories that are presented as being about humanity and human emotion are just so convoluted and overly dramatic and focus on these certain little things that are supposedly meaningful, but just don't really mean anything.

With all the chaos, pain and suffering in the world, the fact that my adoption of a child from who was living in an orphanage, you know, was the number one story for a week in the world. To me, that says more about our inability to focus on the real problems.