Madea is a cross between my mother and my aunt. She's the type of grandmother that was on every corner when I was growing up.

The most important thing that I learned in growing up is that forgiveness is something that, when you do it, you free yourself to move on.

What I've learned is you treat women right.

Being on the 'Alex Cross' set, and watching and learning about and paying attention to everything that was going on there, I realized, 'Here is a moment for me to learn.'

All my time not devoted to my master's service was spent either in prayer, or in making experiments in casting different things in moulds made of earth, in attempting to make paper, gunpowder, and many other experiments, that, although I could not perfect, yet convinced me of its practicability if I had the means.

God is creating at every moment of the world's existence in and through the perpetually endowed creativity of the very stuff of the world.

My first seven novels were contemporary spiritual novels, my next nine had strong elements of fantasy, and now I'm writing thrillers, more as a choice to spread my wings than anything. Writers, like good wine, should mature with age.

Each angel that God created was in himself a masterpiece. Each one possessed his own degree of intelligence and his own beauty.