You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. ... You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file. ... You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. ... Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back.

It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do.

I've given guys blow jobs just because I've run out of things to talk about.' Oh, Rae. Who hasn't

A hundred years from now? All new people.

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God's identity and love and ways. I hate that, but it's the truth.

But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on.