If you want to read anything nasty about me, just go to the backpacker websites. There's this kind of elitist branch where they really believe that I had no business going backpacking.

You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.

What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.

Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.

The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.

You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself.

That my complicated life could be made so simple was astounding.

Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It's the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It's worthy of all the hullabaloo.

There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it.

The appalling thing is the degree of charity women are capable of. You see it all the time... love lavished on absolute fools. Love's a charity ward, you know.

The normal objective of my thought affords no insight into the dark places of human will and feeling.

If you study life deeply, its profundity will seize you suddenly with dizziness.

Critical sobriety is out of the question so long as this master of terror-in-the-commonplace exerts his spell.

I think the term 'conceptual art' is a useful term for writers, a basket to put people in, like Pop Art or Impressionism or whatever.

I barely leave my cage, my house.

I believe the divine is part of the world, not in a pantheistic way but by way of the movement of the Spirit.

My dad was a jingle writer, and my mom was a jewelry designer and musician.

Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.