I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.

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.

When you are in love, an ocean of joy dances like the waves in an ocean. You are that ocean.

To me, there's no great chef without a great team.

That is the voice of God because its the voice of truth and experience.

You can always add something to a bike, but you come to a point where you can’t take anything away and that's a fixed gear bike

I've had death threats, but I've never been fearful for my life. Although I have traveled with security since the '60s.

Surrender to life itself and you'll just be rewarded with so many things. And I've been rewarded so many times, in so many mysterious ways. So I have no reason to be disappointed with anything.

It's important to stand up for your work - otherwise somebody else will step in and say they did it.

And to me, I had come out of Texas, and during that time was when I realized that a lot of people in Nashville, their idea of what country music was was not the same as mine.

I have risen to a body not yet born, existing like a light around a body through which the body moves like a sliding moon.

Private property is one of the best institutions which has ever evolved, to protect us from the bullying of others.