My best teachers were mess, failure, death, mistakes, and the people I hated, including myself.

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.

I saw a street car conductor today with one brown eye and one blue. Wouldn't he make a nice villain for a detective story?

Laughter is ever young whereas tragedy except the very highest of all quickly becomes haggard.

The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.

God is truly on the side of those who work for social justice, especially when we accompany that work with the giving of the Gospel!

Not since Walter Gibson has anyone been better suited to The Shadow than Howard Chaykin

Most people think of ballet as children in little tutus. They don't know it is sweat, blood and tears as well!

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.

I realized that I have very long arms so I can take the perfect arm-length picture with fans

It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together ... and I knew it.

If your life's work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you're not thinking big enough.