Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

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.

an intoxication with forbidden knowledge in which the natural things become unimportant.

I didn't go up to the plate thinking, 'OK, my goal now is to get a hit'-I tried not to think about [the streak].

I'm rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work it's no longer his.

If we believe in them, love them and trust them, they see who they are through our eyes.

The uptake on mobile phones in Africa is phenomenal.

Play hardball with Musharraf, but don't cut off US aid.

As much as we may want to withdraw into a world of pure problem solving, we have to acknowledge that the most successful architectures are the ones you can actually convince someone to implement.

Change can't be made within panic

There's a tradition in American fiction that is deadly serious and earnest - like the Steinbeckian social novel.

We had a lot of support - don't give me "the world", just the televisions. In America we enjoy support,China is neutral, India is for, in Europe they're divided.