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But you are not your bank account, or your ambition. You're not the cold clay lump you leave behind when you die. You're not your collection of walkin...more

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It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.

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grace is a small white butterfly, and life is a semi trailer careening up 101.

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Some people have a thick skin and you don't. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this wo...more

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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 w...more

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Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner's manual, with whatever modicum of grace and good humor we can manage.

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We must not inflict life on children who will be resented we must not inflict unwanted children on society.

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Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you're 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written, or you didn't go swimming in those warm...more

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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 a...more

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How alive am I willing to be?

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Two things put me in the spirit to give. One is that I have come to think of everyone with whom I come into contast as a patient in the emergency room...more

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Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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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.

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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 m...more

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Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good a...more