“As you’re rushing through life, take time to stop a moment, look into people’s eyes, say something kind, and try to make them laugh!”

When we have hope, we are showing that we trust God to work out the situation. Trust is the only way we’re going to make it through and be a part of God’s marvelous plan for His child.

Kids can be a pain in the neck when they’re not a lump in your throat.

A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.

Violets are God’s apology for February.

We can never untangle all the woes in other people’s lives. We can’t produce miracles overnight. But we can bring a cup of cool water to a thirsty soul, or a scoop of laughter to a lonely heart.

A lot of kneeling keeps one in good standing.

Teaching literature is teaching how to read. How to notice things in a text that a speed-reading culture is trained to disregard, overcome, edit out, or explain away; how to read what the language is doing, not guess what the author was thinking; how to take evidence from a page, not seek a reality to substitute for it.

My karma just ran over my dogma.

Old florists never die. They just make other arrangements.

Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.

Pain is inevitable. Misery is optional

I don’t have to figure out why or how or when. God has a plan, and I’m committed to it. That commitment frees me from having to worry about the details.

If we give someone a piece of bread and butter, that’s kindness, but if we put jelly or peanut butter on it, then it’s Loving Kindness.

The secret of growing younger is counting blessings, not birthdays.

Grudges are like hand grenades: it is wise to release them before they destroy you.

We can choose to gather to our hearts the thorns of disappointment, failure, loneliness, and dismay in our present situation. Or we can gather the flowers of God’s grace, boundless love, abiding presence, and unmatched joy. I choose to gather the flowers.

Well, I will scourge those apes, And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time’s deformity Anatomised in every nerve, and sinew, With constant courage, and contempt of fear.

I don’t have any delusions of grandeur or delusions of failure. In terms of my work, I’ve got a pretty cold honest eye.

There is a tendency to want to isolate a little bit, from people that might look at me from a fan position, because it’s hard to be a real person around them, and I really want that when I’m not out on tour and in that sort of public eye.

What’s the biggest thing you’ve zapped with a fireball?’ I asked. ‘That would be a tiger,’said Nightingale. ‘Well don’t tell Greenpeace,’ I said. ‘They’re an endagered species.’ ‘Not that sort of tiger,’ said Nightingale. ‘

I remember I had this recurring dream that we were playing a night game and instead of eye black we had mashed up the glowing bodies of fireflies and put that under our eyes. So our faces were glowing – a kind of night vision.

By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.

The problem with working with a record label is they maybe a song I want to make a video for that they will refuse to make a video for because they don’t see that song as a single. And I found that very frustrating.

You never fight your eye when you look at a hole. If it looks one way, play it that way. Don’t make a big deal out of an easy shot.