I see that children fill the existential hollowness many people feel; that when we have children, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don’t have a clue how hard it...

The Giants are usually described as rag tag, kind of a great garage sale team, and the Democrats are described as the Mommies to the Republican Daddies; and everyone hates the mommies, but wait, wait...

I didn’t write about my mother much in the third year after she died. I was still trying to get my argument straight: When her friends or our relatives wondered why I was still so...

Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?

Nothing can be delicious when you are holding your breath.

Certainty is missing the point entirely.

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere. While others who have something to say or who want to be effectual,...

Most marriages are a mess, and the children get caught between two bitter, antagonistic parents. My parents stayed married for 27 unhappy years, till their kids were grown, and this was a catastrophe for us.

When I was a kid, our family used to watch ‘Bonanza.’ I really liked having a Sunday night TV ritual.

It was simple reality – most competitive tennis players in my day were privileged, spoiled, entitled and white. Also, many of them were beautiful, fit, tan and of good stock – great big hair and...

It’s incredibly touching when someone who seems so hopeless finds a few inches of light to stand in and makes everything work as well as possible. All of us lurch and fall, sit in the...

E.L. Doctorow said once said that ‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You...

But how?” my students ask. “How do you actually do it?” You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious...

Children should not have treacherous diseases or be afraid. This should be one rule we all agree on.

The clipping said forgiveness meant that God is for giving, and that we are here for giving too, and that to withold love or blessings is to be completely delusional.

Rule 1: When all else fails, follow instructions. And Rule 2: Don’t be an asshole.

No one is more sentimentalized in America than mothers on Mother’s Day, but no one is more often blamed for the culture’s bad people and behavior.

I just try to love and serve everyone, and bring everyone water, and lend an ear; that’s what Jesus said to do.

I write because writing is the gift God has given me to help people in the world.

Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.

When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.

She lived in fear of ifonic endings. (91)

Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, “I hate you, God.” That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is...

You’ve got to learn to let go and let your children fall, and fail. If you try to protect them from hurt, and always rush to their side with Band-Aids, they won’t learn about life,...

Bananas are great, as I believe them to be the only known cure for existential dread. Also, Mother Teresa said that in India, a woman dying in the street will share her banana with anyone...

When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.

Every woman’s path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother’s love is withering.

Mothering has been the richest experience of my life, but I am still opposed to Mother’s Day. It perpetuates the dangerous idea that all parents are somehow superior to non-parents.

I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up...

Intelligence, goodness, humanity, excitement, serenity. Over time, these are the things that change the musculature of your face, as do laughter, and animation, and especially whatever peace you can broker with the person inside.It’s furrow,...

It is hard to remember that you are a cherished spiritual being when you’re burping up apple fritters and Cheetos.

There was going to be a spot for me in this joint, the earth, after all. It was never going to be a great match for someone as bright and strange as me, but books...

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

For me, Jesus is my cleft in the rock. He is my safest friend, my safe totally loving accepting big brother.

Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path.

If you are mesmerized by televised stupidity, and don’t get to hear or read stories about your world, you can be fooled into thinking that the world isn’t miraculous–and it is.

It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But...

I want people who write to crash or dive below the surface, where life is so cold and confusing and hard to see.Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth.

When you don’t have enough or you run out, you feel in your core that the leak has begun and there will be no end to the leakage. And this makes you feel like a...

But you don’t always get what you want;,you get what you get

My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words; about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found. In a library, you...

We can’t understand when we’re pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on...

We’re often ashamed of asking for so much help because it seems selfish or petty or narcissistic, but I think, if there’s a God – and I believe there is – that God is there...

These days cry out, as never before, for us to pay attention, so we can move through them and get our joy and pride back.

My theory is that, as with our children, as with every surface of that geodesic dome inside the 8-Ball, every age we’ve ever been is who we are.

I didn’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.

When we did art with the kids, the demons would lie down.

These two things are almost all I want, but unfortunately, neither one is my strong suit. I am very strong on blame, and wish this were one of God’s values, but trust, surrender? Letting go,...

Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life – it has given me me . It has provided time and experience and failures and triumphs and time-tested friends who have helped...

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.