Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

My mother's last word to me clanks inside me like an iron bell that someone beats at dinnertime: love, love, love, love, love.

It's funny, it never occurred to me that a movie star would play me. But now that she [Reese Witherspoon] is playing me, it's like, of course, it couldn't be anyone else! I don't know if you've seen pictures of Reese and me and Reese and my daughter Bobbi, who's named after my mother, and also plays me. There's a kind of resemblance.

Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.