Despair has been called the unforgivable sin-not presumably because God refuses to forgive it, but because it despairs of the possibility of being forgiven.

A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, 'I can't prove a thing, but there's something about his eyes and his voice. There's something about the way he carries his head, his hands, the way he carries his cross-the way he carries me.'

I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are yours. Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it means to be human.

I am such a person of words. I've spent so much of my life trying to get it right, say it right, say it eloquently, say it truthfully, say it honestly, that when I hear it said in ways that none of those adverbs would describe I find myself so repelled that it almost shuts my mind off.

Don't look down on them for looking down on us. Look at them, instead, as friends we don't know yet and who don't yet know what they are missing in not knowing us.

The Jesus I follow is the peacemaker, is one who says forgive your enemies, who worries about the poor, who worries about the poorest of the poor instead of the richest of the rich.

When [our secrets] are sad and hurtful secrets, like my father's death, we can in a way honor the hurt by letting ourselves feel it as we never let ourselves feel it before, and then, having felt it, by laying it aside; we can start to take care of ourselves the way we take care of people we love.