“The moment of change is the only poem.”

“I am a part of all that I have met.”

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you.”

“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.”

“We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.”

“Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas.”

“It's the gymnasium of life where you get the workout, the resistance, and you find out things about yourself that you didn't know.”

“Share with people who've earned the right to hear your story.”

“We stumble on...bring a little noise into the silence, find in others the ongoing of ourselves.”

“The best way to get rid of the pain is to feel the pain. And when you feel the pain and go beyond it, you'll see there's a very intense love that is wanting to awaken itself.”

“Whatever you do in life, remember: Think higher and feel deeper. It cannot be bad if you do that.”

“For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I meet someone and look at his or her smile.”

“You must stir it and stump it, and blow your own trumpet, or trust me, you haven't a chance.”

“Sorrow comes in great waves...but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot and we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.”

“We generate the results in life we believe we deserve. ”

“Out of difficulties grow miracles.”

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all.”

“Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.”

“You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it.”