People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen.

I'm just trying to make the point that the story we're telling ourselves is often very different from the story we're telling the people around us.

When you fly across the country in an airplane the country seems vast; but it isn't vast. It's all connected by roads one can ride a bike down. If you watch the news and there's a tragedy at a house in Kansas, that guy's driveway connects with yours, and you'd be surprised by how few roads it takes to get there.

...she wanted God to make sense. He doesn't. He will make no more sense to me than I will make sense to an ant.

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are. And when you stop expecting material possessions to complete you, you'd be surprised at how much pleasure you get in material possessions. And when you stop expecting God to end all your troubles, you'd be surprised how much you like spending time with God.

Half the time I don't know what I'm trying to say.

I know, from the three visits I made to him, the blended composite of love and fear that exists only in a boy's notion of his father.