I rebel against death, yet I know that it is how I respond to death's inevitability that is going to make me less or more fully alive.

I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.

People become trustworthy when they are trusted.

The truth is that I hate to think about other people reading my books," Miranda said. "It's like watching someone go through the box of private stuff that I keep under my bed.

Everything we do, our entire interior monologue, is prayer.

Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learned not to trust.

The virgin birth has never been a major stumbling block in my struggle with Christianity; it's far less mind boggling than the Power of all Creation stooping so low as to become one of us.