No matter what circumstances, it's hard to be a parent and maintain a sense of self and identity in the world.

Never compare your insides to everyone else's outsides.

by then I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier.

I am skittish about relationships, as most of the marriages I've seen up close have been ruinous for one or both parties.

This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.

If you asked me, parents were supposed to affect the life of their child in such a way that the child grows up to be responsible, able to participate in life and in community.

When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you.