Certainty is rarely if ever possible and we increase the likelihood of getting things wrong if we succumb to the hunger for it.

Producing writing is not so much like filling a basin or pool once, but rather getting water to keep flowing through till finally it runs clear.

It's an unnecessary burden to try to think of words and also worry at the same time whether they're the right words.

Meaning is not what you start with, but what you end up with.

It is the moment when what was chaos is now seen as having a center of gravity. There is a shape where a moment ago there was none.

Everyone agrees in theory that we can't judge a new idea or point of view unless we enter into it and try it out, but the practice itself is rare.

The question for writing then is this: how long are you willing to be unheard?

He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him)...

The middle class in America is at a tipping point. It will not last another generation if we don't boldly change course now.

Anybody who comes to you and says he has a perfect language is either naive or a salesman.

Maybe. Although I doubt most Shadowhunters get a tattoo of Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on their left shoulder.

I believe without any doubt that you are the finest generation this Church has ever had.

God's end is to enable me to see that he can walk on the chaos of my life just now.

A handkerchief can never be put in another pocket after it has been in one pocket. I don't walk under ladders. I have items of clothing that are lucky for me. That rotates, but I am luck-oriented.

University is a wonderful opportunity to find out not just much more about the world, but much more about yourself, too.

OK Computer? More like No Thank You Computers. They killed my father, and I hate them.

And I leave the children the long, long days to be merry in in a thousand ways, and the Night, and the trail of the Milky Way to wonder at.