Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied.

February is just plain malicious. It knows your defenses are down.

I woke up one morning and realized that what I wanted to say to everyone - children, young people, adults - was: Read for your life.

A good story is alive, ever changing and growing as it meets each listener or reader in a spirited and unique encounter, while the moralistic tale is not only dead on arrival, it's already been embalmed. It's safer that way. When a lively story goes dancing out to meet the imagination of a child, the teller loses control over meaning. The child gets to decide what the story means.

The challenge for those of us who care about our faith and about a hurting world is to tell stories which will carry the words of grace and hope in their bones and sinews and not wear them like fancy dress.

Some folks are natural born kickers. They can always find a way to turn disaster into butter.

life ain't supposed to be nothing, 'cept maybe tough