Like a house in the rain, books were havens of permanence and protection from whatever it was that as a child I needed protection from.

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need.

We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old.

Pay attention to the things that bring a tear to your eye or a lump in your throat because they are signs that the holy is drawing near.

Pay mind to your own life, your own health, and wholeness. A bleeding heart is of no help to anyone if it bleeds to death.

In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.

The world says, The more you take, the more you have. Christ says, the more you give, the more you are.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.

Your strength will be found when you stop struggling with yourself, instead of thinking everyone is a struggle worth overcoming. Every obstacle in life is a lesson that teaches us, not others.

Life is a sail boat ride. Wind, the destiny. But dammit, you are the sailor!

Embracing human frailty, fallibility, and heartbreaking aloneness is crucial for any person seeking to attain self-actualization and self-realization.

Honey, when I look at you, you're right, I don't see anything similar to those other women. But don't you see? That's what makes you so special. That's why I love you.

I have enjoyed a wonderful run in films, so far, and I may, at some point, come back. But it will be in my own time and in my own style.

You cannot wash the feet of a dirty world if you refuse to touch it

Feverishly we cleared away the remaining last scraps of rubbish on the floor of the passage before the doorway, until we had only the clean sealed doorway before us.

I live a lonely photographic life here in Santa Fe. I do see Eliot Porter occasionally, and Ansel storms through every so often, otherwise I plug along in my old fashioned way.

Do the thing that's less passive. Do the active thing. There's more of the human in that.

I never met a writer who wasn't lazy.