...Attempts at imitation would put the emphasis where it didn't belong. The goal was to improve the lives of others, not oneself.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else.

You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

Public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

All family stories are important, just as all people are important, and they deserve to be passed along.

With slight misconceptions of reality we fabricate our hopes and beliefs, and we live off crusts that we call cakes, like poor children who make-believe they’re happy.

Jonah’s anger was not marked by outbursts of rage but by a quiet withdrawal from the company of others and a growing preoccupation with the events in his own life.

Whoever sets any bounds for the reconstructive power of the religious life over the social relations and institutions of men, to that extent denies the faith of the Master.

It’s only when you’ve lost someone that you realize the nonsense of that phrase “It’s a small world”. It isn’t. It’s a vast, devouring world, especially if you’re alone.

Fascination is one step beyond interest. Interested people want to know if it works. Fascinated people want to learn how it works.

Some believers tend to forget God's persistent faithfulness in the face of the spectacular and showy.

She thought I was...soulful, by which I think she means that I don't say much and I always look vaguely pissed off.

Never be shamed of being Afrikan

Every day, I read about new ideas and research that could help someone I care about live a longer and healthier life.