by then I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier.

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.

...your memory is a warm stone hidden in my hand I'm always turning over...

She is a girl who feels things strongly, and though cynics might mock her for that, I never will, as it is perhaps the best of graces: to feel deeply, to care profoundly.

I’d do it all over again, knowing that you were going to be there at the end. I’d walk through the sadness and the loneliness all over again for you.

The present is always the best, even when its rough.

You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.

When you're a crime reporter, you see the nub of what life's about, and you don't have much patience for the falsity of politics.

I just drank a fifth of vodka, dare me to drive?

The first novel that I wrote was because I was having very interesting sorts of experiences, for Indians of my generation.

Believe you can do it and you are halfway there

Somehow the idea has gotten around that it is unchristian to take a stand against heresy. Some of us need to read the New Testament again.