God makes a way out of no way.
Every Sunday I nudge Sam in her direction, and he walks to where she is sitting and hugs her. She smells him behind the ears, where he most smells like sweet unwashed new potatoes. This is in fact wha...
Don't be mean to yourself, though . . .this is the only sin.
Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.
All these years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But what I've discovered since is that lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a ba...
All good writers write [terrible first drafts.] This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. . . I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully an...
Most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of the people around you.
Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for...
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over...
You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confi...
When I was a child, I thought grown-ups and teachers knew the truth, because they told me they did. It took years for me to discover that the first step in finding out the truth is to begin unlearning...
What helps is that we are not all crazy and hopeless on the same day.
We kept on cooking and walking the dog, taking the kids to the park, cleaning the kitchen, and letting Sara and Adam hate what was going on when they needed to. Sometimes we let them resist finding an...
Vonnegut said, When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
Tom said either you learn to live with paradox and ambiguity or you'll be 6 years old for the rest of your life.
Then it came to me: I was asking the wrong question. The right one is: Where is God in gang warfare? And the answer is, The same place God is in Darfur, and in our alcoholism, and when children are bu...
The welcome book would have taught us that power and signs of status can’t save us, that welcome—both offering and receiving—is our source of safety. Various chapters and verses of this book would rem...
The challenge and the dignity make it interesting enough. Besides,
Sometimes grace is a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks.
Periods in the wilderness or desert were not lost time. You might find life, wildflowers, fossils, sources of water.
