If someone's different from you and it scares you or makes you mad, that's God telling you to take a closer look. If you're scared or mad, that's about you, not about the person who scares you or angers you.

If you've seen 'Friday Night Lights' - that was just like my town.

(The Michigan district) used it as an all-school reader, ... Sophomores, juniors and seniors were reading it and discussing it and discussing it in different disciplines, and I was getting some amazing e-mails back from kids and teachers.

...You don't always get what you expect. I wish someone, sometime when I was growing up, would have told me what expectations would get me. ...
Our parents, schools, everyone tells us things will be a certain way when we're adults and if they're not that way, we should make them be; or at least pretend. But after a certain point that just doesn't work.

Nothing exists without its opposite.

The value of a story like 'Deadline' is kids get to look at death at the perfect distance. They can put the book down. They can experience the story, rub up against it, but it's not real life.