I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.

I have sometimes wondered if the greatest desire of man is to be known and loved anyway.

And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it.

What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.

You can't tell a good story without conflict - the story can't be beautiful or meaningful. We're taught to run from conflict, and it's robbing us of some really good stories.

If we knew how much God loved us and was for us, we’d talk to Him all day long.

How disappointing would it be get to heaven and find out God created life to be enjoyed while all we did was worry?

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing.

I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me

People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen.

My advice would be to write-never to stop writing, to keep it up all the time, to be painstaking about it, to write until you begin to write.

My lord, I’d rather be alone.” His smile vanished. Not a single muscle in his body bulged, but the color of his eyes turned to dark ashes.“And I’d rather not.

The good may lose

You can go to hell -- I'm going to Texas.

My idea of a productive day, as both a child and an adult, was reading for hours and staring out the window.

Preferences are bad solutions to performance problems.

"God" is just a name to refer to something that is beyond all limitations.

Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.

My father was a CPA. He worked hard in the aircraft industry, and would come home more and more infrequently. He was about to leave my mother, which he did when I was 15.

I'll miss everyone on Dallas so much, but I have a wonderful career ahead of me. I can feel it.