You celebrate what works and you take tender care of what doesn’t, with lotion, polish, and kindness.

... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]

It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.

Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.

Certainty is missing the point entirely.

When we did art with the kids, the demons would lie down.

A good marriage is supposed to be one where each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal.

Usually if you pray from the heart, you get an answer—the phone rings or the mail comes, and light gets in through the cracks, so you can see the next right thing to do. That’s all you need.

Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.

Prayer usually means praise, or surrender, acknowledging that you have run out of bullets.

First find a path, and a little light to see by. Then push up your sleeves and start helping.

After about 20 years of marriage, I'm finally starting to scratch the surface of what women want. And I think the answer lies somewhere between conversation and chocolate.

The dentist drills some more and you hear him make a mistake. And to cover it up, they all say the same thing: "Okay, rinse."

The 1860 election became a referendum on the southern way of life.

Climate change isn't just an environmental issue; it's a technology, water, food, energy, population issue. None of this happens in a vacuum.

I am proudly not a politician, because I am not behold to any special interest.

Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.

We don't want to go to a movie and sit in a lecture.

It wouldn't quite be fair to say September 11, like, made my career.

Lord of the Rings was just so much enjoyment. It was over about the space of a year that I was filming. It's one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done, so emotional.

You have a very powerful mind that can make anything happen as long as you keep yourself centered.