Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.

You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.

What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.

The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.

You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself.

That my complicated life could be made so simple was astounding.

Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It's the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It's worthy of all the hullabaloo.

Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It's up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.

I was eleven, the idea of two identical digits in my age still new and spectacular and heartbreaking. The girls must have felt this. They must have known. Where had ten, nine, eight, and seven gone?

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.

The past is a sorry country.

It is better not to proceed at all than to proceed without purpose.

As we give the gifts of compassion and humility, our lives become demonstrations of the truth of God's Word.

I feel like we can prove in real time the old trope that comedy is tragedy plus time.

You can't choose the ways in which you'll be tested.

There is not a respectable system of civilization known to history whose foundations were not laid in the institution of domestic slavery.

This is one big problem with working remotely: no one believes you have a job at all.

Whatever you focus on you're going to feel.