As a boy I heard this story in church. A man was patching a pitched roof of a tall building when he began sliding off. As he neared the edge of the roof he prayed, "Save me, Lord, and I'll go to church every Sunday, I'll give up drinking, I'll be the best man this city has ever known." As he finished his prayer, a nail snagged onto his overalls and saved him. The man looked up to the sky and shouted, "Never mind, God. I took care of it myself." How true of us.

Usually life’s greatest gifts come wrapped in adversity.

Books are the most tolerant of friends.

I think the secret to a hoppy life is a selective memory. Remember what you are most grateful for and quickly forget what your not.

In the end, we all lose it. Remember that. In the end, we own nothing.

When a man loses his vision of the future he dies.

So much of young adult literature has turned dark, almost pathological. It's almost as if there is a race to see who can be the most dysfunctional.