...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.

I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said that you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

The reason 'help' is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you're in despair, you're teachable.

...since you can't heal your own sick mind with your own sick mind, I needed to consult somebody else's sick mind.

I accidentally forgot to graduate from college.

The reason I never give up hope is because everything is so basically hopeless.

Being on a book tour is like being on the seesaw when you're a little kid. The excitement is in having someone to play with, and in rising up in the air, but then you're at the mercy of those holding you down, and if it's your older brother, or Paul Wolfowitz, they leap up, so that you crash down and get hurt.