I've always been a journal-keeper. I've always tried to write about how I'm experiencing life, and my feelings and thoughts.

I could even feel how perishable all my moments really were, how all my life they had come to me begging to be lived, to be cherished even.

Every living creature on the earth is special. You want to be the one that puts an end to one of them?

Every person on the face of the earth makes mistakes, Lily. Every last one. We're all so human. Your mother made a terrible mistake, but she tried to fix it.' 'Good night,' I said, and rolled onto my side. 'There is nothing perfect,' August said from the doorway. 'There is only life.

In recent years my understanding of God had evolved into increasingly remote abstractions. I'd come to think of God in terms like Divine Reality, the Absolute, or the One who holds us in being. I do believe that God is beyond any form and image, but it has grown clear to me that I need an image in order to relate. I need an image in order to carry on an intimate conversation with what is so vast, amorphous, mysterious, and holy that it becomes ungraspable. I mean, really, how to you become intimate with Divine Reality? Or the Absolute?

You can't stop your heart from loving, really -- it's like standing out there in the ocean yelling at the waves to stop.

You have untold strengths and resources inside. You have your glorious self.