The truth of my experience is that we are all a lot more alike than we are different.

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.

To be a successful fiction writer you have to write well, write a lot … and let ‘em know you’ve written it! Then rinse and repeat.

If there are no barriers to cross or demons to slay in the journey to reach your desired destination, how can you call it a success?

It is unfortunate for the gods that, unlike us, they cannot commit suicide.

It is your life, accept the responsibility.

And that's where I'm finally at today - my life is about being with my family. This is what's important.

With five to ten hundred pure-minded young women threading the streets of the village every evening unattended, vice must slink away, like frost before the rising sun.

A holy habit clenseth not a foule soule.

The work of education is divided between the teacher and the environment.

There is no way of writing stories that I haven't done.

Home plate is 17 inches wide, but I ignore the middle 12 inches. I pitch to the two-and-a-half inches on each side.