I accidentally forgot to graduate from college.

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.

Passion is not a thing, it's a state of mind.

I read nonfiction for information, fiction for truth.

It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down.

If there's no inner peace, people can't give it to you. The husband can't give it to you. Your children can't give it to you. You have to give it to you.

A people's wrath voiced abroad bringeth grave Danger, no less than public curse pronounced.

God's name is not known; it is wondered at.

When you're cornered, there are two things you can do: move or fight.

I didn't really understand that Vipassana is a relatively new form of Buddhism that was based on the storage of pain. So the idea is that every time you don't scream, that's your Buddhist side.

I think that the 'laws of nature' are also prone to evolve; I think they are more like habits than laws.

Love can't be a metaphor anymore. If you try to make literature out of it, it doesn't work.