If we don't learn to mythologize our lives, inevitably we will pathologize them.

The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems.

All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to those around us.

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

The journey to happiness involves finding the courage to go down into ourselves and take responsibility for what's there: all of it.

Religion is one of the safest places to hide from God.

The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.

God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.

Maturity is the ability to joyfully live in an imperfect world.

There is nothing to prove and nothing to protect. I am who I am and it's enough.

You come to God not by being strong, but by being weak; not by being right, but through your mistakes.

Finish Well

I'm a deeply superficial person.

Each new book that comes out kind of pulls up the old ones a little bit.

Words and a book and a belief that the world is words.

Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

For a generation, terrorists learned they could make war on free nations without fear of war in return. On September 12, the terrorists got war in return.

Better a tooth out than always aching.

If I can't find a theme, I can't make a film anyone else will feel. I can't laugh at intellectual humor. I'm just corny enough to like to have a story hit me over the heart.

Mastery... is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge, hard work, and skill.