You can either practice being right or practice being kind.

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.

If your will to win is greater than fear of failure.. then only you will win.

The gap between understanding and misunderstanding can best be bridged by thought!

I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.

The hardest part has been maintaining a small head and remaining down to earth. So many people try to make you more than you are.

Whatever the mind does, the soul has perforce to suffer the consequences of it, because the soul and the mind are knotted together.

It is by bribing, not so often by being bribed, that wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind. Avarice is a rival to the pursuits of many.

There had been lots of crises in my life. And there was plenty of spunk and battle cry still left in me.

Failure is not an American habit.

I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually.

Don't wait till you die to go to heaven.