Needless to say, there was no one around remotely fitting the description of a normal person: I was at a writing conference.

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.

A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.

Wall your life, guard your heart and mind your mind! A life without a wall least blocks something! A mind without a wall accepts anything at all!

It was pretty much the male code not to let your friends have too much fun if there was any chance you could throw a wrench in their good times.

We hunger in earnest for that which we cannot consume.

Every second of every moment should be cherished. Life is beautiful

The closer a husband is to God, the closer he will grow to his wife.

We all eat & it would be a sad waste of opportunity to eat badly.

When it's impossible, it's better to stoop to compromise, without resisting and without complaining. People who complain are selfish.

It is not in the interest of the German people or in the interest of world peace that Germany should become a pawn or a partner in a military struggle for power between the East and the West.

Other people are as alive as you are. Cruelty is a failure of imagination.