There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness.

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've also just finished filming the role of Robert Brown in 'Just William, ' which is due to transmit on BBC One at Christmas.

Never love anything that can't love you back.

I attach the greatest importance to an amplification of the peace efforts in the Middle East. I would also like to see a greater dialogue between the U.S. and the EU.

Tempus would be protected, better shielded from whatever the Stepson thought threatening, if love could heal and save.

I believe that it is sometimes less difficult to wake up and feel that I am alone when I really am, than to wake up with someone else and be lonely.

Okay, we're going to land somewhere safely, don't worry.

We all long for someone with whom we are able to share our peculiar burdens of being alive.

It is in our power to educate all the children of the world to become a little better as people, a little happier.

Do fish get cramps after eating?

What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever?