If you take the teachings of Jesus, whether you consider yourself saved or you don't, those teachings are pristine. They're wonderful guides for life….

God is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples. God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces, which is why sharing pain freely….

We are, all of us, crippled and twisted. Most of us strive desperately to keep our grotesqueries out of sight and mind. Our suffering is transformed ….

There's no original evil left in the world. Everyone's just recycling pain. (257).

Human empathy, while not found on any chart of human anatomy, is the reason we instinctively hurt for our children... it is the reason that one human….

Sometimes when you push someone, you find out who that person really is..

Maybe the trying is the thing. Maybe it doesn't get better than that. Maybe you never quite get there. And maybe that's okay..

The roots of any evil deed can be traced to the perpetrator's refusal to experience pain..

A jealous husband is an ugly thing..

People react predictably, especially when they don't have time to think..

But insight doesn't necessarily produce self-control. Sometimes you just see your destructiveness more clearly..

Deep down, everyone wants the truth..

But that's the hardest part of healing.' What?' Realizing there's no one to hate..

My throat tightened, but I held back the tears and reminded myself that withdrawing from a woman is no different than kicking a drug; you feel shaky ….

I figured anybody who talked about church as much as she did was using it a little like cocaine anyhow..

People blush when one of their core truths is revealed..

What about my rights? What about a person's privacy? Did all that just go to hell after 9/11?.

Plenty of people who survive tragedies end up ambivalent about danger--frightened by it, yet strangely drawn to it..

For a psychiatrist to be any good, he has to be willing to corner you, close off the easy exits, even when it hurts. It's supposed to. (46).

Relationships are never chance events..

...Some people hurt so much they can't take what they need, even when someone wants to give it to them. (106).