“As I watched them file down the stairs, I didn't cry and I wasn't afraid. But I couldn't tell if it was Jesus or the gin.”

“I just want to tell you if that's what You have planned for me, if I am meant to be an obscure flower in the corner of the expansive garden, I will live there and I will love You and I will bloom j...”

“...in addition to feeling sick and tired and feverish and nauseated, I also felt forgotten. And there was no easy cure for that.”

“When I interviewed at Yale, the admissions committee asked me why they should let me into the program. I looked at them unblinking and said, 'Because I'm going to change the world some day. And I'm...”

“As my nostrils filled with the stench of burnt hair and my friends scurried to clean up the mess, I thought, 'If your hair catches on fire while you're making a wish, does that mean it isn't coming...”

“I needed someone to tell me how God could allow someone He loved to suffer so much when I wouldn't do this to someone I hated.”

“There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sp...”

“My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are...”

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”

“Invariably, I will be referred to Gleason Archer's massive Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, a heavy volume that seeks to provide the reader with sound explanations for every conceivable puzzle f...”

“I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.”

“Sometimes the best answer to a question is another question. Is it not by asking questions that we stimulate each other to reach more deeply into our own source and, thereby, approach the Source, b...”

“Disobey God and you are forgiven. Disobey Nature and you get disease.”

“Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a sid...”

“Cancer. The word meant the same to me as tsunami or piranha. I had never seen them; I wasn't even quite sure what they were, but I knew they were bad and I knew in many cases they were deadly.”