I do not at all understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. - Anne Lamott

There is nothing more touching to me then a family picture where everyone is trying to look his or her best, but you can see what a mess they all really are.

No matter how people mess with you or let you down, or how you let yourself down, a good book means that when you get in bed that night, you have a good hour. I feel like you pay all day for that hour. That's what books mean to me. I can open this two-dimensional, flat white page with squiggly little black marks on them, and someone has created this world that you're going to enter into ...

I sat down in the sand, breathless with shame and failure. God, I thought, some defender of the weak. Some freedom fighter: Joan of Arc in sunscreen.