If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.
If you don't believe in God, it may help to remember this great line of Geneen Roth's: that awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you w...
I do know the sorrow of being ordinary, and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects...
A sober friend from Texas said once that the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you. I hate this insight so much.
The earth is rocky and full of roots; it's clay, and it seems doomed and polluted, but you dig little holes for the ugly shriveled bulbs, throw in a handful of poppy seeds, and cover it all over, and...
Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.
If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the e...
I stared at the little white agates in my hand, delicate as moon drops. The mystery of God's love as I understand it is that God loves the man who was being mean to his dog just as much as he loves ba...
Believing in George Bush was so ludicrous that believing in God almost seems rational.
Laughter is carbonated holiness.
Butterflies were wind energy made visible.
Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.
The way I dance is by writing.
Remember that you own what happened to you.
If you’re not enough before the gold medal, you won’t be enough with it.
But baseball, if we love it, gives us back our place in the crowd. It restores us.
We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here,...
Some people seem to understand this - that life and change take time - but I am not one of those people.
You lose the known package of your nice organized self almost instantly here. Overeating is one way back, the way it is at funerals at home.
These two things are almost all I want, but unfortunately, neither one is my strong suit. I am very strong on blame, and wish this were one of God's values, but trust, surrender? Letting go, forgivene...