“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.”

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.

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 am going to notice the lights of the earth, the sun and the moon and the stars, the lights of our candles as we march, the lights with which spring teases us, the light that is already present.

The first woman was created from the rib of a man. She was not made from his head to top him, nor from his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal to him.

Nature makes penicillin; I just found it.

You are a cosmic creation the world needs right now.

Considering that the blessed life we so long for consists in an intimate and true love of God Our Creator and Lord, which binds and obliges us all to a sincere love.

Charity is the sweet and holy bond which links the soul with its Creator: it binds God with man and man with God.

The more completely we focus our attention on our Creator and Lord, the less chance there is of our being distracted by creatures.

You are much closer than you think to creating a life you adore.

You do not have to be perfect to create healthy love, you just have to be willing.