Reading poetry and reading the great works of the canon that we were reading in the '60s and the '70s and '80s was mind altering.

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.

The problem with our sense of justice is we always seemed to be kind to beautiful and attractive criminals.

You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

The arrival of any child brings you a lot of happiness.

On the secret to a lasting marrige: One of you has to be sane, and the other one is only allowed to be insanne occasionally. We take turnes on who gets to be wich person

What I ate for breakfast on school mornings was one buttered roll--a soft roll, not a hard roll--and one cup of cocoa; any attempt to alter this menu I regarded as a plot to poison me.

If one fears men much he will never do anything great for God: all that one does for God arouses persecution.

Everyone, regardless of his or her decisions, deserves our kindness!

And, as for what is called improving conversation, that is merely the foolish method by which the still more foolish philanthropist feebly tries to disarm the just rancour of the criminal classes.

Bring on the shackles - I'm your prisoner

There's nothing better than going to the movies and going into another world, and forgetting about everything that's happening outside.