RICHARD PAUL EVANS

My grandfather, a devout Christian, had the gift of healing.

At one time in my career, Barnes and Noble bookstores categorized my books as religious fiction.

I absolutely love playing the game 'Risk.'

Don't try to write what other people are writing - write what is true to you.

I find myself seeking out the commonalities of our different religious experiences with hopes of encouraging, through my writings, the most hopeful, loving and redemptive qualities in all of us.

Iwas not a reader at all, not until I discovered 'The Hobbit.' That changed my life. It gave me the courage to read. It led me to the 'Lord of the Rings' series. And once I'd read that, I knew I could read anything because I had just read thousands of pages.

I'm a humble guy, okay?

I believe that love is the choice we make to raise ourselves and others to the highest planes of existence.

Everyone has some inner power that awaits discovery.

The kids who speak well, are articulate and intelligent, are all readers.

The idea of being a novelist is really romantic, but it's kind of the same as being president of the United States - it's not gonna happen.

I have Tourettes syndrome.

So much of young adult literature has turned dark, almost pathological. It's almost as if there is a race to see who can be the most dysfunctional.

Raising or caring for children requires sacrifice and service, which, I believe, heals us from the destructive forces of self-centeredness.

I have a penchant for fresh notebooks and mechanical pencils. It seems every time I go to the store, I buy a new notebook. I have dozens of them just sitting around.

The concept of spiritual healing was something I was raised with.

People are looking for inspiration, and my books are sometimes the vehicles of what people are looking for.

I believe that we were meant to live as social creatures, to reach out and bless each other's lives.

I suppose I have an active imagination, and writing allows me to live it out.

As we walk our individual life journeys, we pick up resentments and hurts, which attach themselves to our souls like burrs clinging to a hiker's socks. These stowaways may seem insignificant at first, but, over time, if we do not occasionally stop and shake them free, the accumulation becomes a burden to our souls.

Life is the soil, our choices and actions the sun and rain, but our dreams are the seeds.

We can only lose what we have first claimed.

There are people I've yet to meet who are waiting for my path to intersect with theirs, so they can complete their own journeys. I don't know who or where they are, but I know for certain that they are waiting.

Could it be that to truly love a thing is not to desire it, but to desire happiness for it?

It is a peculiar thing to believe that you know someone intimately only to find that you really do not. It is like finishing a book only to discover that you have missed several key chapters. THE LETTER Chapter 9 page 104