E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.

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.

In times of war, skepticism can be just cause for execution.

Hearsay, even from the people I love, doesn't equate to gospel truth.

You wrote something easily in youth, and later you came to see how difficult it all was.

Well there's nothing to lose And there's nothing to prove I'll be dancing with myself.

If you have nothing to do, look at yourself and see if there isn't something close at hand that you can improve. It may make you wealthy, although it is more likely it will make you happy.

It would make life much easier if I could have total faith and not question everything all the time, but I can't do it and I won't do it.

The only waste of human resources is letting them go unused.

In antiquity and the Middle Ages reading was necessarily reading aloud.

I live in an old house with no closets and no built-ins. I hate big cupboards.

It's okay to feel things. And be who you are about them.