Writing like this is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.

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 great many things which in times of lesser knowledge we imagined to be superstitious or useless, prove today on examination to have been of immense value to mankind.

Jerusalem is old, Jerusalem is new, Jerusalem can hold Moslem, Christian, Jew.

All great writers begin with a good leather binding and a respectable title.

Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.

I've admired Alicia Keys since before I got into the music industry, just everything she represents as a female artist.

If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.

The only way one can really understand what we are is by knowing yourself.

During misfortunes, nothing aggravates our condition more, than to be esteemed deserving of them.

I have always been restless, had a lot of energy.

Chicks before dicks, and all that.