We all know we’re going to die; what’s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

I don’t know where to start,” one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can....

Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy....

We can see Spirit made visible when people are kind to one another, especially when it’s a really busy person, like you, taking care of a needy, annoying, neurotic person, like you.

One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline…. But also every single day a kid needs a break.

All parents are an embarrassment to their kids. Often, grandparents are the relief. Kids don’t have to resist you.

I like the desert for short periods of time, from inside a car, with the windows rolled up, and the doors locked. I prefer beach resorts with room service.

I was raised with no religious training or influence. Except the influence was to be a moral and ethical person at the secular level. And to be a peace marcher, an activist for civil rights,...

I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.

Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don’t get to meet some of the people who love God back.

His art springs out of bubbling underground necessity, as if he’s somehow dipping himself into the river that gave him life; he’s making dream material visible.

A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I’m not going to take...

Rosie had to keep her room neat enough so James would not freak out, but not so neat that they could figure it all out, break the code, of who you truly were, what you...

The earth is rocky and full of roots; it’s clay, and it seems doomed and polluted, but you dig little holes for the ugly shriveled bulbs, throw in a handful of poppy seeds, and cover...

I loved every second of Catholic church. I loved the sickly sweet rotting-pomegranate smells of the incense. I loved the overwrought altar, the birdbath of holy water, the votive candles; I loved that there was...

I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of...

I do not have deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God.

I don’t remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for...

There’s a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, “Why on our hearts, and...

Grief ends up giving you the two best things: softness and illumination.

Most humbling of all is to comprehend the lifesaving gift that your pit crew of people has been for you, and all the experiences you have shared, the journeys together, the collaborations, births and deaths,...

I wish I had thrown out the bathroom scale at age 16. Weighing yourself every morning is like waking up and asking Dick Cheney to validate your sense of inner worth.

Evangelical Christians and I can sit down and talk one on one about how much we love Jesus, and yet I’m not carried in Christian bookstores.

It’s a great time to be alive.

I hate how long it takes to feel radical, militantly maternal self-acceptance.

I’m all over the place, up and down, scattered, withdrawing, trying to find some elusive sense of serenity.”The world can’t give that serenity. The world can’t give us peace. We can only find it in...

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

For a life oriented to leisure is in the end a life oriented to death – the greatest leisure of all.

You don’t always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.

All good writers write [terrible first drafts.] This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. . . I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully...

Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you.

Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give...

The women’s movement burst forth when I was fifteen. That was when I began to believe that life might semi-work out after all. The cavalry had arrived. Women were starting to say that you got...

Life is not a submarine.

‎You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

With THC in your system, you don’t dream. And you need to. Otherwise it is like losing one of your senses. Dreams are part of your wholeness. … when you’re dreaming, you’re not the one...

If we stay where we are, where we’re stuck, where we’re comfortable and safe, we die there… When nothing new can get in, that’s death.

As a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women are a crucial part of that....

Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost – his or her wildest, most messed-up children – the way you’d ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter...

I have a very dark sense of humor. I swear. I have a very playful relationship with Jesus.

I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon – because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.

I hate the summer.

Hope is not about proving anything. It’s about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.

The problem is acceptance, which is something we’re taught not to do. We’re taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given-...

A good marriage is where both people feel like they’re getting the better end of the deal.

If you haven’t already, you will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and you never completely get over the loss of a deeply beloved person. But this is...

What you’re looking for is already inside you. You’ve heard this before, but the holy thing inside you really is that which causes you to seek it. You can’t buy it, lease it, rent it,...

I’m kind of a gossip hound, but watching the media whip the small fires into giant forest fires so that they can cover the result is infuriating.

I like to read away as much of the afternoon as possible, until real life rears its ugly head.