Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.

I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just get it down.

'Help' is a prayer that is always answered.

Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?

Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.

Sometimes this human stuff is slimy and pathetic...but better to feel it and talk about it and walk through it than to spend a lifetime being silently poisoned.