There is an extraordinary power in storytelling that stirs the imagination and makes an indelible impression on the mind.

Be daring enough to be different, humble enough to make mistakes, wild enough to be burnt in the fire of love, real enough to make others see how phony you are.

God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.

To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.

In every encounter we either give life or we drain it; there is no neutral exchange.

To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means.

Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don’t have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace.

Our identity rests in God's relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.

In Love's service, only wounded soldiers can serve.

The hermit Anthony once told me that a monk is like a fish: take him out of his element and he dies. Silence is his element. In silence you can trade this shoddy world for Heaven.

For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.

I succeed him no one could replace him.

Writing is communication, and you don't know how you're doing until you put it in front of someone else's eyes. You also learn from critiquing other writers' work.

There was never any doubt in our minds that men and women were equal, if not more so.

Why should I learn English? I'm never going to England. Shah, pffff, ur, doy.

What may be on the surface looks like one thing but it's often a much larger problem.

What though the sea be calm? trust to the shore, Ships have been drown'd, where late they danc'd before.

People want to be famous, they want to be loved, they want to be accepted. They want to push aside their past and the things that have been embarrassing to them.

This was an unbelievable experience.