All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often grandparents are the relief. Kids don't have to resist you.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.

... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]

Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos.

Nothing heals us like letting people know our scariest parts: When people listen to you cry and lament, and look at you with love, it's like they are holding the baby of you.

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life's work, and try to get hold of a giant panda.

Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.

Reality so often fails when it comes to small, satisfying details, she thought.

Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.

If an Englishman gets run down by a truck he apologizes to the truck.

You may repeat the most marvelous poems. And that is not worth a cent if you don't live it.

Quarrel with a friend - and you are both wrong.

I believe that we learn by practice.

We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.

Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.

I'm not gonna be perfect, but I'm gonna try stuff.