When the mind is clear, behavior is always impeccable.

Mindfulness meditation doesn't change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart's capacity to accept life as it is.

Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control.

The mind is like tofu. It tastes like whatever you marinate it in.

Spirituality doesn't look like sitting down and meditating. Spirituality looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in the family eve though you've had a rough day.

Life is painful, suffering is optional.

May I meet each moment fully and meet it as a friend.

Ultimately ... it's not the stories that determine our choices, but the stories that we continue to choose.

If we can keep at least a bit of the mind clear about temporality, we can mange complicated, even difficult, times with grace.

Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of present experience. It isn't more complicated than that.

People are realizing that what seemed important to them in their lives-materialism and consumerism-doesn't work at all to make a happy heart. It actually makes an unhappy heart. And an unhappy world.

God is willing to walk the earth again incarnate in us.

Ann: How does God’s character fit into things that seem totally against his character?

You know when you're a child and your imagination is limitless and you really believe in magic? I thought I had super powers.

The enemy will not see you vanish into God's company without an effort to reclaim you.

A lot of times you tell yourself no with things, a lot of times you discourage yourself. I've told myself yes more than no, and with those yeses, I've been able to actually have a career.

What you plan is too small for you to live.

The only woman a wife should ever be jealous of is her husband's mom.

Persistence may not solve everything - at least in our lifetime - but it is truer to the meaning of life for us to wait for another plowing, another seeding, another harvest, then not.

But me thought it lessened my esteem of a king, that he should not be able to command the rain.

I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you're pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I'm a witness because I'm not participating.