“I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can't see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger. They take it out on their spouses, and they go looking for an easier story.”

“I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me”

“Reality is like a fine wine,” he said to me. “It will not appeal to children.”

“When I walked into the Christian section of a bookstore, the message was clear: Faith is something you do alone. Rick does not have much tolerance for people living alone. He’s like Bill Clinton in that he feels everyone’s pain. If Rick thinks somebody is lonely, he can’t sleep at night. He wants us all to live with each other and play nice so he can get some rest. Tortured soul.”

“Meaning is something we experience more than we attain. It's like finding a nice, easy current in a river that carries you through life.”

“Sunday morning church service is not an enormous priority spending time with other believers is.”

“All this gave way to my first encounter with guilt, which is still something entirely inscrutable to me, as if aliens were sending transmissions from another planet, telling me there is a right and a wrong in the universe.”

“What if part of God's message to the world was you, the true and real you?”

“The problem is this: those of us who are never satisfied with our accomplishments secretly believe nobody will love us unless we’re perfect.”

“For a long time, I thought I was good at relationships because I was charming.”

“The downside of being a writer is you get plenty of time to overthink your life.”