For parents, the days are long but the years are short.

Here's a teacher who's talking about Jesus and, oh no, she quotes a bible verse, horror of horrors. The world's breaking and torched and completely messed up, but God forbid some teacher mentions Jesus.

I'm sixteen with what I hope will be a long life ahead, but I'm willing to give it up, to give anything to let her live, to let her make it through the night.

Sometimes you can lock the doors and close the blinds, but the monsters are still there inside your house, sleeping and breathing and just waiting to wake up and terrorize you all over again.

Singing about being rescued will never get old. Never.

This place is just a trailer for a film, Brandon. Our lives here. Heaven is like the movie. Except there’s only one trailer before the movie. And the movie won’t ever end.

Home should never be dark or full of shadows and secrets. It should be bright and full of open doors. It should be full of stories wanting to be told.

You can stand in the middle of a street and let the drops fall on you and feel refreshed. It's like God's little sprinkler.

Suddenly, I can't move. I can't speak. I am set in stone, but it's a glorious chiseled sort of stone.

So yeah, maybe this will be the rest of our lives. Pot roast and Diet Cokes and my parents making eyes at each other. As for those slaps and punches and hateful words, we'll just sweep those under the rug or wherever they can go.

I think of this girl, this bright light coming from such a dark place. I know that the things she believes about God and the Bible and hope and all that are very real to her. They're not nice sayings on Twitter just to fill a box. They're the things she truly believes.I'm not sure I'm ready to rejoice, and I'm not quite ready to pray.The cool thing is that Marvel knows this. She knows this and doesn't seem to mind.

There are a thousand beautiful things behind that look. A marvelous sort of ache that only a few people know about. Some miraculous sort of sorrow she's managed to walk away from.

Writing a novel is like taking a long cross-country journey. The hardest part is getting going, making sure you have all the items you need to take with you, double- and triple-checking that the route you’re taking is the best way. So often you leave your driveway and start north when you realize you actually needed to head southwest. I’ve never written a novel without a certain number of false starts. And it never seems to get easier. Part of me thinks it only gets harder.

Guys can't tell girls what to do. That's an unspoken rule. Learn that now and you'll be way ahead of the game.