“The attempt to prevent our kids from struggling for fear it might scar their permanent records is, instead, scarring them for life.”

“Our own egos are so fragile we cannot bear to give our lives to the raising of children only to have them become ordinary people. There, I said it. The worst thing a 21st-century child of interesti...”

“Did you notice there arent any average kids anymoreonly Gifted and Disposable?”

“We fluff them and fold them and nudge them and enhance them and bind them and break them and embellish them beyond measure; then, as we drive them up to the college interviews that theyve heard sin...”

“I cant hear Gods voice for my kids, but I can watch and listen and pray and adjust and try not to screw up whatever He has planned for their lives. And although I cant make them listen to God, or e...”

“America is a young country, young and brash and prone to errors. Like teenagers. For all our inherent goodness, weve been cursed with bright, shiny object disease and we dont want a cure. Not now. ...”

“If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.”

“I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prov...”

“Not everything you're good at is what you're called to do.”

“Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said."Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.”

“I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don...”

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't li...”

“I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.”

“Fear is all in the mind”