Cynicism is fear posing as confidence; joy is hope let off the leash.

Stand up like a mountain; have faith like a rock; love like an avalanche

Embrace uncertainty. Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won't have a title until much later.

Don't let not knowing how it'll end keep you from beginning. Uncertainty chases us out into the open where God is waiting.

God never said He'd eliminate all of the chaos from our lives; He just said He'd bring meaning to it.

Selfless love is always costly; fear can't afford it, pride doesn't understand it and friends never forget it.

No one leads people to Jesus; He leads people to Himself. All the pressure's off; just go love everybody without agenda.

Instead of closing our eyes and bowing our heads, sometimes God wants us to keep our eyes open for people in need, do something about it, and bow our whole lives to Him instead.

We won't be distracted by comparison if we're captivated with purpose.

The way we love people we disagree with is the best evidence of what we really believe.

That's what love does - it pursues blindly, unflinchingly, and without end. When you go after something you love, you'll do anything it takes to get it, even if it costs everything.

Failure is a fundamental piece of success.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.

The world holds no trace of what happens in it unless we carve it in with violence or concrete.

I was never really sure what I wanted to do - I'm in awe of these people who knew at age 10 or 12 they wanted to be a brain surgeon, and they did it, and they still are.

Of some forty families I have been able to observe, I know hardly four in which the parents do not act in such a way that nothing would be more desirable for the child than to escape their influence.

Nature is one great big wood-chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones and hair.

Jim Harrison is someone I always enjoy, one of the great contemporary writers. I like Tim Ferris' Big Boom Theory. I'm getting into a different kind of reading, not straight novels.

Humor is a universal language.

A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.

I've learned that loving your self requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world - our own self worth.