Before his novels The Firm, Pelican Brief, and The Client catapulted John Grisham to the status of "commercial supernova"--as Newsweek called him--he was an unknown, small-town lawyer. Today, with all the notoriety, Grisham makes a concerted effort to focus on things that have lasting meaning, including his faith in God. Grisham remembers, as a young law student, the remarkable advice of a friend:

One of my best friends in college died when he was 25, just a few years after we graduated from Mississippi State University. I was in law school, and he called me one day and wanted to get together. So we had lunch, and he told me he had cancer. I couldn't believe it.

"What do you do when you realize you are about to die?" I asked.

"It's real simple," he said. "You get things right with God, and you spend as much time with those you love as you can. Then you settle up with everybody else."

Finally he said, "You know, really, you ought to live every day like you have only a few more days to live."

I haven't forgotten those words.