To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.

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

It's better to be kind than to be right.

It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.

Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare.

When I was young, I used to be so jealous of other girls that it crippled me.

Looking back on the God my friend believed in, he seems a little erratic, not entirely unlike her father - God as borderline personality.