Jan Karon quotes:

In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After 'Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.

My life is extremely full and wretchedly busy, and I feel that while my life drains energy from my work, my work in turn drains energy from my life. The result is, I am always playing catch-up spiritually. That is my thorn.

Cynthia came in quietly and set a cup of tea before him. He kissed her hand, inexpressibly grateful, and she went back into the kitchen. When we view the little things with thanksgiving, even they become big things.

Cynics will say there are no good people out there. And if you read the papers and watch TV news you could be convinced of that. But there are good people.

You could tell a lot about people who would stop what they were doing to watch the Almighty go about His business (said as several stopped to watch a beautiful sunset, Chapter 14).

As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Viola! Bookshelves!

I stepped out on faith to follow my lifelong dream of being an author. I made real sacrifices and took big risks. But living, it seems to me, is largely about risk.

This is a gift that God has given me. I'm not smart enough to write for everybody, but it's the love in these books that comes from Him and goes out to my reading audience. I'm forever grateful for that. It's a privilege.

So many people don't know that God loves them. They feel, 'Why would God love me? Why would He be interested in me?'

When I open many books, or most leading women's magazines, or see almost all TV shows, I don't find myself at all. I am completely anonymous. My value system is not there.

I remember the first time I held my book, my first book in my hands. I cannot tell you how it moved me.

The dark book has been terribly popular. Dark characters, dysfunction, and all sorts of things from reality that are true in our world.

Publishing is, by its nature, about deadlines, and deadlines are toxic.

There are so many people who don't know small towns exist. When I write, I want to give my readers two things: one is a sense of consolation, and two, I want to make them laugh.

Well, I think some people are very happy in retirement. And in a year and a half I'm going to see how happy I feel in retirement. I'm just going to not work quite so hard, but I'll continue to write as long as God gives me breath.

Writing is a way of processing our lives. And it can be a way of healing.

So here is what my advice would be: If God has given you a dream, you'd better get cracking because He wants you to use it. That's why He gives them to us in the first place.

I grew up hearing words like snakeroot, sassafras, mullein - things that had wondrous, mysterious sounds in their names.

There's nothing trite about being consoled in a world that does everything in its power to deliver sorrow.

There was a lot of brokenness in my family. Let's just say that I was raised by my grandparents.

I really care about my readers. I care about anyone who reads my books.

My grandmother influenced me so deeply.

So many people don't know that God loves them. They feel, 'Why would God love me? Why would He be interested in me?

Easter is never deserved.

Even the roughest character, underneath all that hurt, is someone who wants to love and be loved.

Love is an actual need, an urgent requirement of the heart, he read aloud from an old essay on marriage that he found in his files.Every properly constituted human being who entertains an appreciation of lonelinessand looks forward to happiness and content feels the necessity of loving. Without it, life is unfinished

As worthless as guilt was known to be, he couldn't help feeling it, seeing his wife work herself to exhaustion for a parish tea that would last only two hours.

One of the things that makes a dead leaf fall to the ground is the bud of the new leaf that pushes it off the limb.

Love is an endless act of forgiveness.

Are you reading your Bible?" Ah, well...I was." And then you quit." You got it." Then, you can expect to be weak on one of your flanks, and that's precisely where the Enemy will come after you with a vengeance.

Phillipians 4:13 for Pete's sake!

There may be circumstances in this life that God uses to keep bringing us back to Him, looking for His grace.

The firefly only shines when on the wing, So it is with us--when we stop, we darken.

I made real sacrifices and took big risks. But living, it seems to me, is largely about risk.

Don't fear whatever God lays before you today.

Bottom line, wasn't life itself a special occasion?

Food is a great way of communicating,

Let's just say that I was raised by my grandparents.

And it can be a way of healing.

The significant, life-forming times are the dull, in-between times.

Paul said in the second epistle...the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine...they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn from the truth and wander away to myths.

The standing fields [ready to harvest]were the legions who hadn't filled their God-vacuum with the One who was born to fill it; the standing fields were those who waited for someone to reach out and speak the truth, and tell them how they might be saved.

Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain, th' way I see it. For too many years, I ate fancy, I dressed fancy, I talked fancy. A while back, I decided to start talkin' th' way I was raised t' talk, and for th' first time in forty years, I can understand what I'm sayin'.

I learned not to be so bitterly defeated when my fiction took a beating from editors. I learned in advertising to color in the lines and have my work done on time and to make it the very best it could be.

I believe that's when God first started speaking to my heart--the very day I started speaking to His!

Loving can be hard. Sometimes we don't feel loving, but it isn't all about feeling. Very often it is about will. Practice that if you can.

Let me say that I absolutely loved writing 'A Common Life,' because it was a book about love.

For a very long time, I wrote a book a year, and was eager and willing to do it, to put bread on the table, to have my work out there. Now I must write a book every two years, and that's never enough time, either.

I'd like you to know that I have forgiven him. Again and again. Once done, course, back comes the Enemy to persecute and persecute, and I must ante up to God and forgive yet again.

I have confidence that God is with us in all things, both tender and tough

I've put everything I had and I've given my readers 120 percent, and that's the truth.

I try to put my heart out there to everybody. They don't have to be Christian. For example, I have lots of Jewish readers. I love my Jewish readers.

...weary of k knowing too much and understanding too little.

In Ireland there's no such thing as bad weather ~~~ only the wrong clothes. (In the Company of Others)

I've got a lot to download on your mercy and grace. I've always rushed up to You and dumped whatever it was and hurried away, fascinated by my own busyness. I want to turn all this over to You slowly, carefully, examining every fragment as I pass it off, so there'll never be any question about it again. Every time I've dumped and run, I've nearly always run back and snatched it out of Your hands. Help me in this.......Right now, I'm certain of only one thing - that You love us, and that's where we all have to begin.

Lord, make me a blessing to someone today

Give me faith, Lord, to know Your Presence as surely as I know the beating of my own heart. I've felt so far from You....

When the trees and the power lines crashed around you, when the very roof gave way above you, when the light turned to darkness and water turned to dust, did you call on Him? When you called on Him, was He somewhere up there, or was He as near as your very breath?

When we turn from our sin, and have the blessed forgiveness of the Almighty, then we can ask Him to run things, and let Him be in charge.

Love is an actual need, an urgent requirement of the heart, he read aloud from an old essay on marriage that he found in his files.Every properly constituted human being who entertains an appreciation of loneliness...and looks forward to happiness and content feels the necessity of loving. Without it, life is unfinished...

Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain ...

I have raced against the clock since I went into advertising at the age of eighteen.

I live in a village where people still care about each other, largely.

My first novel is loaded with food references largely because my cupboards were bare, and I was writing hungry.