You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.

For me, Jesus is my cleft in the rock. He is my safest friend, my safe totally loving accepting big brother.

After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.

If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.

Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.

Joy is the best makeup. But a little lipstick is a close runner-up.

I do not understand how deeply people seem to like my work - but I love that people feel I have helped them through hardships, and also have shared my experience of living a more spiritual and present life. It's so great to be able to make people laugh, because this is so often how we get our selves back.