When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.

The problem with God - or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God - is that he or she rarely answers right away.

There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, "Why on our hearts, and not in them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.

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

Feeding a baby is like filling a hole with putty - you get it in and then you sort of shave off all the excess around the hole and get it back in, like you're spackling.

Some people wanted to get rich or famous, but my friends and I wanted to get real. We wanted to get deep. (Also, I suppose, we wanted to get laid.)

Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it gave me me. It provided the time and experience and failures and triumphs and friends who helped me step into the shape that had been waiting for me all my life...I not only get along with me most of the time now, I am militantly and maternally on my own side.