God is always drawing us closer, blow by blow and bit by bit. And most of the time we do not even know it is happening.

Men and women are most alike at their most mature and soulful levels. Men and women are most different only at their most immature and merely physical levels.

Life is not, nor ever has been, a straight line forward ... Life is characterized much more by exception and disorder than by total or perfect order.

The school of relationships is where you learn self-knowledge. I just don't know how you could learn it sitting alone in the desert on a rock by yourself. You have to see where you fail at it. And that confrontation with your own ability - "I was again not able to love" - those are the teachable moments.

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.

When you do the first half of life well, you have a good sense of yourself. Most of our mainline Christian denominations, in my opinion, don't do the first or second halves very well. We don't really give people a good container, we give them a bunch of legalisms.

What I wish I had said in the book [Falling Upward] is that part of the attraction of conservative religions, such as Mormonism, Mennonite, Amish, groups we would consider very traditional, is that they actually do the first half of life very well. They are often very happy people.