“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.”

“We're all afraid of the same stuff. Mostly we're afraid that we're secretly not okay, that we're disgusting, or frauds, or about to be diagnosed with cancer. ... We want to teach you how to quiet the yammer ... how you can create comfort, inside and outside, how you can get warm, how you can feed yourself. And even learn to get through silence. ... There is a wilderness inside you, and a banquet. Both. [p. 253]”

“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.”

“When we think we can do it all ourselves--fix, save, buy, or date a nice solution--it's hopeless. We're going to screw things up. We're going to get our tentacles wrapped around things and squirt our squiddy ink all over, so that there is even less visibility, and then we're going to squeeze the very life out of everything.”

“I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”

“...music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way.”

“These are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition.”