...words are in a way our godly sharing in the work of creation, and the speaking and writing of words is at once the most human and the most holy business we engage in.

Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions, beneath our religion or lack of it, we are all vulnerable both to the storm without and the storm within.

The worst isn't the last thing about the world. It's the next to the last thing. The last thing is the best. It's the power from on high that comes down into the world, that wells up from the rock-bottom worst of the world like a hidden spring. Can you believe it? The last, best thing is the laughing deep in the hearts of the saints, sometimes our hearts even. Yes. You are terribly loved and forgiven. Yes. You are healed. All is well.

You can survive on your own; you can grow strong on your own; you can prevail on your own; but you cannot become human on your own.

When a man leaves home, he leaves behind some scrap of his heart. . . . It's the same with a place a man is going to. Only then he sends a scrap of his heart ahead.

... in the long run, there can be no joy for anybody until there is joy finally for us all

My prayer is spasmodic, occasional, desperate. It has a great deal to do with my children's physical well-being - that when they're traveling in the air the plane not crash, things like that.