Anytime you write about priests or cops, they're hot-button professions.

I'm very sentimental about lobsters. The last lobster I ate was the only lobster I cooked.

That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.

It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.

For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.

Sometimes if there's a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself.

Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected.