When I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned out to be just the opposite. That's when the sparkle started for me.

A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.

Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild.

Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.

Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.

The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion. Surely at least one such person lives in your zip code.

In my godless household, poems were the closest we came to sacred speech -- the only prayers said.

I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer.

I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient!

I believe in God, but even if you don't, you can believe in a self, the person who is innately who you are. Once you fully become that person, then everything you do will be blessed.

How much smaller the large places are once we're grown up, when we have car keys and credit cards.

Do you ever answer anything in a way that people expect you to?

It was like being high when you reach those high notes.

Waiting is the rust of the soul.

Mama, you taught me to do the right things / So now you have to let your baby fly / You've given me everything that I will need / To make it through this crazy thing called life

The most good you can do for yourself spiritually is to live your life with total love, conviction, and purpose.

Turn soft and lovely anytime you have the chance.

Basically, I'm afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking.

In health we're doing the digestive system. We each got assigned a topic for an oral report. I got the small intestine. I swear to god I hate my life.

Yes," I say. "Three of these flying birds." I touch my collarbone, marking the path of their flight - toward my heart. One for each member of the family I left behind.

Delay leads impotent and snail-paced beggary.