It's easy to operate under the illusion that what we are doing is so important we cannot stop doing it. ... Stopping is a spiritual act. It is the refuge where we drink life in.

To fashion an inner story of our pain carries us into the heart of it, which is where rebirth inevitably occurs.

The body knows things a long time before the mind catches up to them. I was wondering what my body knew that I didn't.

To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.

He'd gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse. It seemed like this should tell God something.

Back in the autumn I had awakened to a growing darkness and cacophony, as if something in the depths were crying out. A whole chorus of voices. Orphaned voices. They seemed to speak for all the unlived parts of me, and they came with a force and dazzle that I couldn't contain. They seemed to explode the boundaries of my existence. I know now that they were the clamor of a new self struggling to be born.

My mother's life was way too heavy for me.