I kept asking God for help, and after a while I realized something -- that Josh was not enjoying this either. He was just trying to take care of himself, and I made the radical decision to let him off the hook.

My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.

The solution is always spiritual, and it almost never has anything to do with the problem ... laughter is carbonated holiness.

Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions.

I love silence. I seek and create it at every opportunity. I need it to work.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.