I always wondered why God was supposed to be a father," she whispers. Fathers always want you to measure up to something. Mothers are the ones who love you unconditionally, don't you think?

Everytime I look at a zebra, I can't figure out whether it's black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and that frustrates me.

Love is not a because, it's a no matter what.

The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.

There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.

There's always going to be bad stuff out there. But here's the amazing thing -- light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into the light.

You can't look back - you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.

Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.

The wolves knew when it was time to stop looking for what they'd lost, to focus instead on what was yet to come.

If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?

‎Pick ten strangers and stick them in a room, and ask them which of us they feel sorrier for - you or me - and we all know who they'll choose.

You couldnt erase everything that caused you pain with recollection.Every memory was valuable

It is instead just the grace of a common person turning suddenly real because he is common and human and recoignizable.

Remember as there are people that can help you to roll the boat of your dreams, there are also people who can drill holes under that boat to make it sink.

This is why I can't be with Levi. Because I'm the kind of girl who fantasizes about being trapped in a library overnight -- and Levi can't even read.

You're all so busy trying to be tough that you've forgotten how to be brave.

I had a very funny and depressing talk with my seventy-four-year-old mother. I decided, she doesn't have a bucket list - she has a kick-the-bucket list.

The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I don't know nothing. I mean, that's my life lesson.

People don't know what it means to be champions. Oklahoma invented it.

If the first button of one's coat is wrongly buttoned, all the rest will be crooked.

The richest most meaningful stories are found in small places: made, carried, crafted, told, and retold by apparently unimportant people.