I worry that Jesus drinks himself to sleep when he hears me talk like this.

When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.

Being a parent is absolutely exhausting and draining, along with all the joy and love.

People help you or you help them and when we offer or receive help, we take in each other. And then we are saved.

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

You are going to love some of your characters because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason.

I'm one of those religious people who are afraid of everything. I'm instantly worried about everything that could go wrong.