“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”

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.

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories.

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.

I don’t know much, but I understand how entirely doomed I am without God.

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.

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.

The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.

The reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day.

We are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through.

The world is always going to be dangerous, and people get badly banged up, but how can there be more meaning than helping one another stand up in a wind and stay warm?

You can either practice being right or practice being kind.

I didn’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.

When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.

Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.

How do you begin? The answer is simple: you decide to.

Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.

Passions are the gales of life.

The basic fact of today is the tremendous pace of change in human life.

I am black or white, I’ll never be grey in my life.

Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.

I know how important voting and elections are. But everybody know that life is going to be life regardless of who is president.

Life is to be entered upon with courage.

A life without orgasms is like a world without flowers.

Do you believe in life after love?