I believe God lets us stumble along, slowly finding our way, and giving us chances to pick each other up.

I think this is what we all want to hear: that we are not alone in hitting the bottom, and that it is possible to come out of that place courageous, beautiful, and strong.

This is the only advice I offer you. Pick the small thing, and carry it on. Let it change your life.

It is the capacity to feel consuming grief and pain and despair that also allows me to embrace love and joy and beauty with my whole heart. I must let it all in.

I know what it's like to sleep in fear, to starve myself to be worthy, to be ashamed of my voice, to want to sleep forever. To question why I deserve to live.

I name you today, heart fears. I am small, but you are smaller. You will not stop me. You have a voice, fears, and I must listen, but then I will open my heart. I will love you right to death.

I've had a lot of therapists, so I've had the opportunity to approach my fear in many different ways. I've faced it head on and sideways and tried to tiptoe up behind it.

The most amazing thing is that all my sorrows, all of my darkest moments, are becoming my gifts.

The shadow is dark and the woods are cold, but they are not endless. No matter how lost you are now, you are not lost forever. You are findable.Love just keeps on looking. Love is forever tries.

Everything we have, everything we are, is a gift. How can we judge and shame ourselves if this is true?

Love lights our darkness. It is forever tries.

Just because they're a story doesn't mean they're not real.

We had so much fun together as friends that I suggested we [with Kate DiCamillo] write a book together.

You can never ask others to do something you would not do. That is integrity.

I just wanted to make sure I had the music true to me and the life I'm living and to what I really want to say. That's super important to me.

You have an advantage that neither education nor upbringing can buy - you have almost nothing. And therefore you have almost nothing to lose.

Literature ... is the rediscovery of childhood.

People who try to predict the future by extrapolating in a line of more of what exists - they are always wrong.

My only hope was to be polite.

Self-deceit is a most damaging trait. The remedy, for an artist, is to paint a self-portrait!

It's easier to love a brand when the brand loves you back.