“Sometimes when you love someone like a mother loves her child, that love can turn into fear. It happens to me all the time. I am so afraid that the world will not be kind to my children.”

If no pain, then no love. If no darkness, no light. If no risk, then no reward. It’s all or nothing. In this damn world, it’s all or nothing.

Do not measure your marriage by how much love you feel today: measure it by how much love you’ve offered today.

A safe life includes following your dreams with the full knowledge that doing so is not, in any way, shape or form, safe in the traditional meaning of the word. Because living safely means dying without too many regrets. That is safe.

If you’re not okay, you might as well not pretend you are, especially since life has a way of holding us down until we utter that magic word: help! That’s when angels rush to your side.

Habits are learned. And children learn their habits by watching what we do, not by listening to what we say. So we have to stop talking and teaching and preaching and just go do.

We are – each and every one of us – unlearning misogyny. It’s going to take some time. But be aware and active of your prejudices. Notice when they kick in and resist. Fight to stay soft and open. Step back and squint hard.

Life is a conversation. Make it a good one.

Sometimes the rewards of risk don’t leave us wrecked. Sometimes we find our passion, our purpose, courage, connection, and comfort. Every good thing in our lives is a direct result of risk.

I’m not big on faith rules, but if I had to choose one, it would be that every person must choose a faith issue upon which to hang her hat that requires her to change – not somebody else.

The amazing thing about love and attention and encouragement and grace and success and joy is that these things are infinite. We get a new supply every single morning, and so we can give it away all day. We never, ever have to monitor the supply of others or grab or hoard.

It makes no sense to me that my gay friends cannot get married to each other because a certain slice of Christianity doesn’t believe in gay marriage.

We’re told that to be successful girls, we have to be small and quiet. Yet to be successful humans, we have to become big and have a voice. There’s an inherent contradiction.

The Internet has become my enabler. It keeps me from stillness and discomfort, and this keeps me from growing.

Being a mother is a little like ‘Groundhog’s Day.’ It’s getting out of bed and doing the exact same things again and again and yet again – and it’s watching it all get undone again and again and yet again. It’s humbling, monotonous, mind-numbing, and solitary.

When people express opinions that differ from yours, take it as a chance to grow. Seek to understand over being understood. Be curious, not defensive. The only way to disarm another human being is by listening.

I just think that if we are going to call ourselves pro-life, we must also agree that starvation and poverty and disease and immigration and health care for all and war and peace and the environment are also pro-life issues.

Wait for those unguarded moments. Relax the mood and, like the child dropping off to sleep, the subject often reveals his truest self.

A child’s spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.

The good thing about being an actress is that it’s very children-friendly. I can work for three months and then I can have six months off. And then I can work for six months and have six months off.

Everybody wants to be somebody. The thing you have to do is give them confidence they can. You have to give a kid a dream.

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.

The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.

My stepfather stepped in where no man would’ve stepped in – six kids, five of them boys – and that’s heroic.

If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you Pope.