I write because writing is the gift God has given me to help people in the world.

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.

Relax, refresh and refocus.

A man of peace shall always live in peace, if all chances are given and only shall he stand to fight for his rights if peace and freedom isn't granted to him.

Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.

The problem is when you try to impose today's standards on people living back then. It's the politically correct thing to do, but it was a different era, a different country then.

The sun will soon be setting, and corpses make poor company by night. These were dark and dangerous men, alive. I doubt that death will have improved them.

Lasting goal achievement requires lots of time, hard work, sacrifice & dedication to a process that is maintained over years.

Obviously, it's some kind of freely commanded modality in the psyche with which we can have a relationship if we will but evolve a control language and a dialogue. And it remains mysterious.

I'll go do films for three or four months and then I can't wait to go home to LA. And I complain about LA left and right, but then I always end up wanting to go home, you know?

Don't think being 'religious' means becoming harsh or hard. When Allah enters a heart, He softens it--He doesn't harden it.