I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me.

Presents can make up for some of the disappointments that life doles out, such as it makes almost no sense and is coming to an end more quickly than ever.

Grace means you're in a different universe from where you had been stuck, when you had absolutely no way to get there on your own.

Everything was coming together by coming apart . . . It is the most difficult Zen practice to leave people to their destiny, even though it's painful - just loving them, and breathing with them, and distracting them in a sweet way, and laughing with them . . . if something was not my problem, I probably did not have the solution.

I was the angriest daughter on earth, and also, one of the most devoted.

Life does not seem to present itself to me for my convenience, to box itself up nicely so I can write about it with wisdom and a point to make before putting it on a shelf somewhere.

Sometimes it takes failure to figure out who you aren't.