Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.

The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a spiritual awakening.

Whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware.

Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.

This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.