It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life. - Anne Lamott

when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born — and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.

Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.