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

Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.

So a moral position is not a message. A moral position is a passionate caring inside you.

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.

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.

There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.

Individuals sometimes feel insignificant and doubt that one person can really make a difference in this world. Well, believe me, one person can.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

You got to like your work. You have got to like what you are doing, you have got to be doing something worthwhile so you can like it – because it is worthwhile, that it makes a difference, don’t you see?

The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail.

Markets go up not because there is abundance of buyers, but because there is a lack of sellers.

There’s a difference between quittin and knowin when you’re beat.

In the memory of the dead all chronological differences are effaced.