Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together.
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor; the enemy of the people. It will keep you insane your whole life.
I go to church every Sunday, which is like going to the gas station once a week and really, really filling up.
No matter what circumstances, it's hard to be a parent and maintain a sense of self and identity in the world.
Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.
I just try to love and serve everyone, and bring everyone water, and lend an ear; that's what Jesus said to do.
I think drugs are part of the magical possibilities of youth and I wouldn't be here if I had continued with it.
Summer nearly does me in every year. It's too hot and the light is unforgiving and the days go on way too long.
I do not have deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God.
I think we're all pretty crazy on this bus. I'm not sure I know anyone who's got all the dots on his or her dice.
Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.
People help you or you help them and when we offer or receive help, we take in each other. And then we are saved.
All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often grandparents are the relief. Kids don't have to resist you.
Radical self-care is what we've been longing for, desperate for, our entire lives-friendship with our own hearts.
He got me a cup of tea with honey, toast with honey, yogurt with honey, like I was John the Baptist with the flu.
Grace arrived, like the big, loopy stitches with which a grandmotherly stranger might baste your hem temporarily.
...since you can't heal your own sick mind with your own sick mind, I needed to consult somebody else's sick mind.
It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.
[S]he believed that the Buddhists were right–that if you want, you will suffer; if you love, you will grieve. (68)
All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often, grandparents are the relief. Kids don't have to resist you.
Charles had once remarked that holding onto a resentment was like eating rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.
For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.
The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a spiritual awakening.
Write regularly, whether you feel like writing or not, and whether you think what you're writing is any good or not.
When we search for something larger than our own selves to hook into, we can come through whatever life throws at us.
Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.
I am an Aries. Although I do not believe in astrology, I think this is exactly the right sign to have been born under.
I do believe that God is with us even when we're at our craziest and that this goodness guides, provides, and protects.
Lies cannot nourish or protect you. Only freedom from fear, freedom from lies, can make us beautiful, and keep us safe.
Toddlers can make you feel as if you have violated some archaic law in their personal Koran and you should die, infidel.
I am skittish about relationships, as most of the marriages I've seen up close have been ruinous for one or both parties.
These days cry out, as never before, for us to pay attention, so we can move through them and get our joy and pride back.
This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period.
Some people won't go the extra mile, and then on their birthday, when no one makes a fuss, they feel neglected and bitter.
You just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it.
My mother was a not-too-devoted atheist. She went to Episcopal church on Christmas Eve every year, and that was mostly it.
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.
The reason 'help' is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you're in despair, you're teachable.
Get to know your characters as well as you can let there be something at stake, and then let the chips fall where they may.
I'm one of those religious people who are afraid of everything. I'm instantly worried about everything that could go wrong.
My experience as a writer is that you really do write seven and eight pages to find the paragraph you were after all along.
If you are hoping to find your self-worth and fulfillment in other peoples' opinion of your writing, you will never find it.
It was not facing what life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight where it was unstraightenable.
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.
I write everything as a wake-up call to myself and others, to anyone who may have gotten tired of hitting the snooze button.
Needless to say, there was no one around remotely fitting the description of a normal person: I was at a writing conference.
I've seen prayers answered. But often, in my experiences, if you get what you pray for, you've really shortchanged yourself.
Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.
Frequently, as so many poets and psalmists and songwriters have said, the invisible shift happens through the broken places.
When everything starts going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born.