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..

Most children would rather preserve the fantasy of a loving connection with their fathers and mothers, at all costs, even if it costs them their self….

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 ….

Deep down, everyone wants the truth..

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

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

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

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

What was it about not knowing a person that allowed you to wonder whether she might be the answer to all your problems?.

Because depression is so thematically powerful and so dark, when it's very severe, it can make people feel not only as if they've lost a loving conne….

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

A jealous husband is an ugly thing..

The irrational thoughts were the ones with the power to burn holes in your gut..

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….

Most of you guys can't see the potential in a nervous breakdown. A real collapse. There's more chance of finding yourself in a major depression than ….

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 ….

...the horrific fact that our lives and those of the people we love are impermanent and exquisitely fragile, that any of us can cease to exist withou….

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

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….

If you're going to have 19 children, you should supervise them well..