The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up. The shortcut to closing a door is to bury yourself in the details. This is how we must look to God. As if everything's fine.

Am I sleeping? Have I slept at all? This is insomnia.

If you're male and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?

A little old lady sitting at the front of the bus can do nothing to change civil rights.

Really, just looking around, you feel a twinge of pity for the poor souls who succeeded in getting past the Pearly Gates. One can't help but picture the lackluster VIP lounge in Heaven, a kind of nonalcoholic ice-cream social starring Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mahatma Gandhi. Hardly anyone's idea of a "with-it" social register.

People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.

I am the cause of all my upsets. I am my worst enemy.