Life lessons are not journeys traveled in straight lines but are crossroadsformed years and miles apart.

Follow your heart. Then root its longing with the facts.

No moment is too small to claim. Strung together, moments fashion a life.

Risk: no full life occurs without it.

Practice makes comfort. Expand your experiences regularlyso every stretch won’t feel like your first.

Mistakes help to sharpen your next steps. They don’t prove that you shouldn’t try again.

Each of us has our definition of adventure: ending an unsatisfyingrelationship, returning to school, parachute jumping or training for amarathon. Go ahead. Get your thrill on.

Stand up for yourself by not standing yourself up.

We can talk about it, dream about it and dissect the fine print.In the end, only action satisfies our longing.

To believe that we can have what we want is an act of trust – not only of others but also, ourselves.

If companionship is a mandate for all of our experiences, then we will miss out on many of life’s blessings.

But this dagger – this was her first. Her favorite. The same one that had sliced off the boy’s toe on the beach and sent it rolling through the sand.

No man is such a legalist as the good Secularist.

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection the past then lives in your words and you are free.

If you have a brother or sister, tell them you love them every day - that's the most beautiful thing. I told my sister how much I loved her every day. That's the only reason I'm OK right now.

We said we'd walk together baby come what may.That come the twilight should we lose our way.If as we're walkin a hand should slip free,I'll wait for you And should I fall behind,Wait for me.

In the summer of 2010, I was working on a version of "True Detective" that I was thinking might be my next novel, and it was told in these two first-person voices; Cohle and Hart's voices.

When you understand yourself, that very day you have understood the whole of humanity. Then nobody can make you miserable.

I'm not into sugar for kids, but you don't want your kid to be the carrot kid. There's always the kid at the birthday parties carrying a bag of carrots. You've got to let them eat a little cake.

I don't even want to call it God. I just want to call it connecting with something that's greater than I am. So that's the biggest thing from Tennessee - the spirit.