So what are we supposed to do again, when we hate everything? You stop pretending life is such fun or makes sense. It's often messy and cruel and dull, and we do the best we can. It's unfair, and jerks seem to win. But you fall in love with a few people. Like I love you, Elizabeth. You're the angel God sent me.

Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

How do you begin? The answer is simple: you decide to.

Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions.

Radical self-care is what we've been longing for, desperate for, our entire lives-friendship with our own hearts.

Toddlers can make you feel as if you have violated some archaic law in their personal Koran and you should die, infidel.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor; the enemy of the people. It will keep you insane your whole life.