Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.

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.

The greatest love stories are not those in which love is only spoken, but those in which it is acted upon.

Love came, it saw, and it conquered me.

If not his life, Rustom Iraqiwalla wanted his death to be worth something.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

What I do not want to write is didactic political tracts.

Holiday traditions in my family are really it's all about the kids.

Fernando Vargas may have had a 6-pack in his stomach, but he didn't have a six-pack on his chin.

When you get to readin' about where the music and John Steinbeck and all those people like that come from, the further you go the more interesting it becomes.

If you want to turn out an atheist child, unconditional love constantly is a good way to do it.

Madness, like small fish, runs in hosts, in vast numbers of instances.