Publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

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.

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love.

At the end of the day, you got to learn from people that been through what you been through; they help you learn from your mistakes.

I'm too old to be forced.

If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable.

Heartbreak is funny to everyone but the heartbroken.

I think guys who are rebels and make their own rules are appealing.

Everything is permitted, everything is allowed, and all our Gods we have outwitted, we are running with the crowd.

Get over it. Get on with your life.

There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.

O Word of God incarnate . . . It is the golden casket Where gems of truth are stored; It is the heaven-drawn picture Of Thee, the Living Word.