Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.

by then I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

... everyone has come to understand that unconditional love is a reality, but with as shelf life of about eight to ten seconds. [p. 110]

He told me about his monster. His sounded just like mine without quite so much mascara. When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.