Dancing almost always turns out to be a good idea.

Evangelical Christians and I can sit down and talk one on one about how much we love Jesus, and yet I'm not carried in Christian bookstores.

And yet, I do believe there is ultimately meaning in the chaos, and also in the doldrums. What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, 'This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I’m going to go hide in the garage.'

I'm human, you're human, let me greet your humanness. Let's be people together for a while.

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.

I didn't write about my mother much in the third year after she died. I was still trying to get my argument straight: When her friends or our relatives wondered why I was still so hard on her, I could really lay out the case for what it had been like to be raised by someone who had loathed herself, her husband, even her own name.

Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner's manual, with whatever modicum of grace and good humor we can manage.