“We’re told that to be successful girls, we have to be small and quiet. Yet to be successful humans, we have to become big and have a voice. There’s an inherent contradiction.”

I snap at people I love all the time, and that makes me feel bad about myself. I want to be Zen. I am so not Zen. Whatever Zen is, I’m the opposite of it.

The most important thing on Earth is for all of us to make this sentence true: Compassion is what people do.

We are all trained by Disney to believe that the wedding is the finish line, but the wedding is just another starting line. In light of this fact, we should quit the huge, fancy, debt-inducing weddings.

Life is not safe, and so our task is not to promise our kids there will be no turbulence. It’s to assure them that when the turbulence comes, we will all hold hands and get through it together.

I ask only child-free pals for parenting advice because they’re the only ones sane and well-rested enough to have any real insight.

Many of us spend the first part of our adult lives becoming – stepping into the roles we take on so that they come to define our lives. But I’ve learned that we don’t really grow up until we unbecome.

It is suggested to us a million times a day that our bodies are projects. They aren’t. Our lives are. Our spirituality is. Our relationships are. Our work is.

I believe in people because I believe in God. I think God knew what God was doing when God made each of us.

If we are going to ask for our daily bread, we’ve got to take the time to receive it and eat it. God provide, but we’ve got to slow down long enough to taste and see.

Questions are like gifts – it’s the thought behind them that the receiver really feels. We have to know the receiver to give the right gift and to ask the right question. Generic gifts and questions are all right, but personal gifts and questions feel better.

Rock bottom is a crisis. And everyone wants to avoid crisis. But what ‘crisis’ means literally is ‘to sift’ – like a child who goes to the beach, lifts up the sand, and watches all the sand fall away, hoping that there’s treasure left over. That’s what crisis does.

I know how I like my house. I like it cute and cozy and a little funky, and I like it to feel lived in and worn, and I like the things inside of it to work. That’s all. And for me, it’s fine that my house’s interior suggests that I might not spend every waking moment thinking about how it looks.

I am not, at the end of the day, a mother, a wife, a writer, an activist, a friend. I am a child of God. That’s who I was when I came into this world and who I’ll be when I leave it. No one can take that from me.

When in doubt, I choose love above any particular ideas offered to me about faith.

You need to remember that being rejected by church is not the same as being rejected by God. God did not kick you out of church, honey. The church kicked God out of church.

I realized I didn’t just want to parent children in my own little home but to mother the whole world. What’s the point of gaining influence if you’re not going to use it?

The highest person is he who is of most use to humankind.

We’re all human and we all have great amounts of pressure on us. When someone’s hurting, be there. We could all use a little compassion.

Everybody round you pretendin that they are your partner, let you have a problem they won’t even help you out.

Some people have no idea what they’re doing, and a lot of them are really good at it.

A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining.

Cooperation and respect for each other will advance the cause of human rights worldwide. Confrontation, vilification, and double standards will not.

As human beings, it is still our responsibility to hold ourselves accountable regardless of what is going on in the world around us.

People run from rain but sit in bathtubs full of water.