The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.

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

I think Jesus is divine love manifest on Earth, as it comes through the community of Christians.

...music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way.

In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.

You can either practice being right or practice being kind.

My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable