“Hope begins in the dark.”

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.

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

The heights of the earth don’t even begin to measure up to how much the creator of this universe loves you.

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.

Failure is only the opportunity to begin again. Only this time, more wisely.

The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly!

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

When you feel like you’ve reached your limit, it’s only the beginning.

Life, he realize, was much like a song. In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it’s in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.