Quote collection
647 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But, what I've discovered is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place, and that only grieving can heal grief. The passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it."
"We are not here to see through one another, but to see one another through."
"I can tell you that what you're looking for is already inside you."
"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."
"So what are we supposed to do again, when we hate everything? You stop pretending life is such fun or makes sense. It's often messy and cruel and dull, and we do the best we can. It's unfair, and jerks seem to win. But you fall in love with a few people. Like I love you, Elizabeth. You're the angel God sent me."
"I am a terrible and lazy Christian. I do not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. I just skip about a third of it. I love the parts I love so much, but I find a lot of it just appalling. When a right-wing person quotes a passage in order to attack and stigmatize another person--or group of people--I just roll my eyes."
"My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear."
"How do you begin? The answer is simple: you decide to."
"You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself."
"What fills us is real, sweet, dopey, funny life."
"Listen to your broccoli and it will tell you how to eat it."
"I'm human, you're human, let me greet your humanness. Let's be people together for a while."
"Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity."
"And she is going to dance, dance hungry, dance full, dance each cold astonishing moment, now when she is young and again when she is old."
"If you always dreamed of writing a novel or a memoir, and you used to love to write, and were pretty good at it, will it break your heart if it turns out you never got around to it? If you wake up one day at eighty, will you feel nonchalant that something always took precedence over a daily commitment to discovering your creative spirit? If not--if this very thought fills you with regret--then what are you waiting for?"
"Sometimes this human stuff is slimy and pathetic...but better to feel it and talk about it and walk through it than to spend a lifetime being silently poisoned."
"Love is so much bigger than our ignorance."
"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."
"Trying to reason with an addict was like trying to blow out a lightbulb."
"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor; the enemy of the people. It will keep you insane your whole life."