It's incredibly touching when someone who seems so hopeless finds a few inches of light to stand in and makes everything work as well as possible. All of us lurch and fall, sit in the dirt, are helped to our feet, keep moving, feel like idiots, lose our balance, gain it, help others get back on their feet, and keep going.

Toni Morrison said, "The function of freedom is to free someone else," and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do?

E-books are great for instant gratification - you see a review somewhere of a book that interests you, and you can start reading it five minutes later.

Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost - his or her wildest, most messed-up children - the way you'd ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter in juvenile hall.

I was raised in a family where none of us ever raised a voice, so there was no room to express feelings of rage or even unabashed joy - a little bashed joy, here or there, or being mildly disgruntled.

I am a terrible and lazy Christian. I do not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. I just skip about a third of it.

For me, Jesus is my cleft in the rock. He is my safest friend, my safe totally loving accepting big brother.