“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.”

“San Quentin’s is the safest beach in the world. We’re not talking about lifeguards here who might yell at someone who’s being rude-we’re talking about armed guards, in watchtowers, two blocks away.”

“God sent Jesus to join the human experience, which means to make a lot of mistakes. Jesus didn't arrive here knowing how to walk. He had fingers and toes, confusion, sexual feelings, crazy human internal processes. He had the same prejudices as the rest of his tribe: he had to learn that the Canaanite woman was a person. He had to suffer the hardships and tedium and setbacks of being a regular person. If he hadn't the incarnation would mean nothing.”

“Being a writer guarantees that you will spend too much time alone -- and that as a result, your mind will begin to warp.”

“Sometimes grace is a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks.”

“by then I'd figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier.”

“It's better to be kind than to be right.”