After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they’d actually made some sort of choice.

I did a lot of reading of the Bible and became fascinated with the idea of the Rapture. It's pretty wild. I hadn't heard of it until I was in college.

Eve still marveled on a daily basis at the speed with which her own life had changed. A year ago, she'd been lost and flailing, and now she was found. She wanted to call it a miracle, but it was simpler than that, and a lot more ordinary; she'd met a kind and decent man who loved her.

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

I read 'The Great Gatsby' in high school and was hypnotized by the beauty of the sentences and moved by the story about the irrevocability of lost love.

When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher,' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.