Elizabeth

“I have been told, both in approval and in accusation, that I seem to love all my characters. What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer’s imagination that I set most high.”
― Eudora Welty, The Collected Stories

“In the absence of real society, I made my own out of the imagined people Peter Flynt slid into my locker. They entered like corpses on a slab, but they came to life in my mind with each turn of the page.”
― Erin Bartels, The Words Between Us

“A moment of peace, a moment without doubt, a moment I felt that, were I called to, I could walk on water, I could hold back the wind.”
― Erin Bartels, The Words Between Us

“Those of us who write, who sing, who paint, must remember that to a child a song may glow like a nightlight in a scary bedroom. It may be the only thing holding back the monsters. That story may be the only beautiful, true thing that makes it through all the ugliness of a little girl’s world to rest in her secret heart. May we take that seriously. It is our job, it is our ministry, it is the sword we swing in the Kingdom, to remind children that the good guys win, that the stories are true, and that a fool’s hope may be the best kind.”
― Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making