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.

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.

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.

You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town

The most basic task of any museum must be the protection of works of cultural significance entrusted to its care for the edification and pleasure of future generations.

A poet must sing for his own people.

Snape is vindictive, he's cruel. He's not a big man. But he loves. I like him, but I'd also like to slap him hard.

And Jesus was a Jew too. Your god. He was a Jew like me. And so was his father.

The great thing about an attitude is that it's yours and you can change it.

Other arms reach out to me, Other eyes smile tenderly, Still in peaceful dreams I see, The road leads back to you.

We are the yearning creatures of this planet.

To be as good as our fathers, we must be better. Imitation is not discipleship. When some one sent a cracked plate to China to have a set made, every piece in the new set had a crack in it.

A man who dies without adequate life insurance should have to come back and see the mess he created.

I have always said that the best training to be a TV newsman or anybody on television is to do a children's show because you are oblivious to the fact that there is a camera there.