“Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you . . . remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God’s business . . . even your own life is not your business. It also is God’s business. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can become a life-transforming thought . . . unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy . . . What deadens us most to God’s presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort . . . than being able from time to time to stop that chatter . . . ”

“What you did in the past is your business. Those were your choices—your mistakes—if you even believe they were mistakes. Stop caring what anyone thinks and live your life the way you want to live it.”

“Why don't you mind your own fucking business?" I snapped. "If I want to take my sister to my place of business, that's my own damned business and not any of your business." Was I overusing the word business? Fuck it. "So mind your own business.”

“Keep busy, Sandy ... when you're busy you don't have time to brood ...""Life should be more than keeping busy.""Maybe it should be, but for most of us, it's not.”

“I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business.”

“I hear what many of you are saying: We don’t have the time, we are busy. Well Nobody Has Time, Everyone Is Busy. In the time it took you to read this post, your life just got a minute shorter. That is precisely why we read (and why some of us write): because life is short and finite, we want more, and literature is the distillation of all those lives we will not lead.”