Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since parents of kids the same age as yours won't admit how horrible their children are.

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 wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilightNo I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.

It is better to recognise that we are in darkness than to pretend that we can see the light.

My mom raised me to be clean, so it's in my nature. I have two little girls, and I'm married, but we've got a nanny and a maid.

The very idea of freedom incites fear in the hearts of terrorists across the world.

The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything.

I am finding it very hard to get my novel started. I suffer from stylistic abscesses; and sentences keep itching without coming to a head.

If you are a conservative you can never get anything wrong. I was very proud of the fact that I didn't get anything wrong that I said during the course of the debates.

Chemistry begins in the stars. The stars are the source of the chemical elements, which are the building blocks of matter and the core of our subject.

The American people love immigration. They just want it obeyed. They want the laws obeyed. They want there to be assimilation.

I worked in Hollywood as a reader and a would-be writer for about 6 years before I sold my first story.