“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”

One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline. But also every single day a kid needs a break.

Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we’re invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.

Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you.

Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos.

You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.

And as it turns out, if one person is praying for you, buckle up. Things can happen.

A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn’t protect itself and it doesn’t hide. It stands out, like a baby’s fontanel, where you can see the soul pulse through.

A good marriage is where both people feel like they’re getting the better end of the deal.

Your inside person doesn’t age. Your inside person is soul, is heart, in the eternal now, the ageless, the old, the young, all the ages you’ve ever been.

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don’t think your way into becoming yourself.

I don’t remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child.

Laughter is carbonated holiness.

The miracle is that we are here, that no matter how undone we’ve been the night before, we wake up every morning and are still here. It is phenomenal just to be.

To the oppressed with no seat on the table; dreaming of change and better days, I will pull up a chair, and light fires in your name.

It said that a lot of people, when they die, they see this light. Like in a tunnel. They say it’s the light leadin’ you to heaven.

She has one hell of a dark soul, but damn, it’s so full of light.

I think I saw you again in the moonlight tonight, and I swear I could taste the hints of it alll.

I do not trust anyone who hides in the light and denies darkness exists.

And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light, but the Electricity Board said He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected.

The magic that lives in being loved for who you are in the shadows, not just for how you appear in the light.

To hearts which near each other move From evening close to morning light,The night is good; because, my love,They never say good-night.