Your experiences will be yours alone. But truth and best friendship will rarely if ever disappoint you.

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.

What's the point of being a grown-up if you don't get to be immature?

Success is not in what you have, but who you are.

You have to passionately want it to possess it.

Anytime you deny the acknowledgement of God you are undermining the entire basis for which our country exists.

When you have a steady job you're more inspired to broaden yourself.

I write songs very quickly, so the 20 minutes of joy I get out of writing a song doesn't compare to the two months of joy I get engaging with the people who like my music.

Music takes us where words cannot.

There are words that exist in one language and not in another language. It creates barriers that keep us from understanding each other. I'm often frustrated using words to talk to people.

I want to direct, I want to be part of something creative, something with quality.

The most radical, audacious thing to think is that there might be some point to working hard and thinking hard and reading hard and writing hard and trying to be of service