Grace doesn't obsess with ourselves. It obsesses with people and with brokenness. This is a hard place to live, but God is bigger than hard places to live.

Of all the exotic aromas and experiences from my sojourn in Ethiopia, it’s the frankincense I miss most.

Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you absolutely don't deserve. ...... benign good will. unprovoked compassion. the unearnable gift

Grace has a way of sneaking up on you like that. When you least deserve it.

Music is a vehicle that propels me and so many other people toward a place we might call grace.

Trying to explain or define grace is like catching the wind in a cardboard box or describing the color green.

Laughter is grace in its gaseous form.

Good morning, God. Another beautiful day. I'm still here, and so is the sun. Thank you. Right, now let's get down to business.

Maybe that's why Jesus was so fond of parables: Nothing describes the indescribable like a good yarn.

It was just an idea I had, that it could be cool to have a book covered in fake fur.

We need self-confidence in our ability to build Africa. I trust in Mali and I trust in music.

After leaving law school, I intentionally said that I never wanted to hold a job more than six years.

Like Aristotle, conservatives generally accept the world as it is; they distrust the politics of abstract reason – that is, reason divorced from experience.

All middle-class novels are about the trials of three, all upper-class novels about mass fornication, all revolutionary novels about a bad man turned good by a tractor.

The moment you put a mental label on another human being, you can no longer truly relate to that person. . . It then becomes possible to perpetrate any act of violence.

My professional life has been a constant record of disillusion.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

I see no women out here, and you're chanting about a male organ, now tell me who's the fruit bootie?

I don't think the press are vindictive. They can write what they want