Robert Burns said it best: Life is but a day at most.
Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs we...
Now, Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking dictation from God every morning-- sitting there, one supposes, plugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile a...
My parents, teachers, and the culture I grew up in showed me a drawer in which to stuff my merciful nature, because mercy made me look vulnerable and foolish, and it made me less productive.
Mattie was in love with Daniel, of course; this was the X within the circle on her map: I love Daniel.
Love and goodness and the world’s beauty and humanity are the reasons we have hope.
Kindness toward others and radical kindness to ourselves buy us a shot at a warm and generous heart, which is the greatest prize of all. Do you want this, or do you want to be right? Well, can I get b...
It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.
In biblical times, they used to stone a few thirteen-year-olds with some regularity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home. The mothers were usually in the first row of stone throwers, and ha...
I'm all over the place, up and down, scattered, withdrawing, trying to find some elusive sense of serenity.The world can't give that serenity. The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our...
I watched him carefully. He was making art because he has to, and because he's brave enough to try and make contact, right there on the edge of madness, where he dreams.
I understood immediately the thrill of seeing oneself in print. It provides some sort of primal verification: you are in print; therefore you exist.
I picked up a book on gardens, so I could study flowers and trees and vines in that way, and honest to God, people who read my novel believed that I loved to garden. Sometimes in fact they would start...
I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me.
I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good enough at it...
I cry intermittently, like a summer rain. I don't feel racked by the crying; in fact, it hydrates me. Then rage wells up in me, and I want to take a crowbar to all the cars in the neighborhood.
Hallelujah that in spite of it all, there is love, there is singing, nature, laughing, mercy.
Grief ends up giving you the two best things: softness and illumination.
God sent Jesus to join the human experience, which means to make a lot of mistakes. Jesus didn't arrive here knowing how to walk. He had fingers and toes, confusion, sexual feelings, crazy human inter...
Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in...