The reason I never give up hope is because everything is so basically hopeless.

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.

Success is the prosperity of the soul

Anyone can be a story. Everyone is.

The Cross is the eternal expression of the length to which God will go to in order to restore broken community.

The divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding . . . as punishment, torment, death, and transfiguration.

I'd rather not sing than sing quiet.

My parents, both of them had teachers in their family and were pretty well read. So my father voted for [Dwight] Eisenhower.

If you want something, if you take it for your own, you'll always be taking it from someone else.

Rollin' down the street, smokin' indo, sippin' on gin an juice Lay back with my mind on my money and my money on my mind.

Children are like a mirror. They help you see yourself and all the flaws that you and your partner might have avoided looking at earlier.

A man’s doubts and fears are his worst enemies. He can go ahead and do anything as long as he believed in himself.