“Butterflies and birds are like one perfect teaspoon of creation.”

People help you or you help them and when we offer or receive help, we take in each other. And then we are saved.

Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.

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.

Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, ‘Well, isn’t that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do about your stuff.

Expectations are resentments under construction.

Grace means you’re in a different universe from where you had been stuck, when you had absolutely no way to get there on your own.

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

When faced with a crisis, do three things: breathe, pray and be kind.

Never compare your insides to everyone else’s outsides.

Creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

What’s the difference between you and God? God never thinks he’s you.

Radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air. It is a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, “Well, isn’t she full of herself,” smile obliquely, like Mona Lisa, and make both of you a nice cup of tea.

Joy is the best makeup.

Rule 1: When all else fails, follow instructions. And Rule 2: Don’t be an asshole.

I spent my whole life helping my mother carry around her psychic trunks like a bitter bellhop. So a great load was lifted when she died, and my life was much easier.

I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.

I don’t know where I learned elephants like their tongues slapped. Whatever turns you on.

Men are pigs. Too bad we own everything.

The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse – as a luxury befitting a young man.

I think fur looks better on an animal than on a human being. So I dress my dog in a mink teddy.

The best part is coming. What’s the best part? You swallowing an entire cow whole? No. That’s the finale.

Usually, I’m only sad when something sad happens. I am not a melancholic person. I like to live very much in the present. If I was an animal, I’d be a little cat. They like to live life.

I stayed in show business to pay for my animal business.

I’m in the middle of my sixth book, which is about animals at the Los Angeles Zoo.