Rita Mae Brown:

You can't let people treat you like garbage.  If you do, they'll think you are.

Rita Will, p. 464

Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a wood and I -- I took the once less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Ellen DeGeneres:

Our age is something we have absolutely no control over, it's just a fact of who we are.  I enjoy growing older and wiser and learning from my mistakes every single day.  I'm happy, for example, that I no longer eat paste, like I did when I was twenty-four.

Seriously...I'm Kidding, p. 8

Virginia Woolf:

I suppose that I did for myself what psycho-analysts do for their patients.  I expressed some very long felt and deeply felt emotion.  And in expressing it I explained it and then laid it to rest.

Moments of Being, p. 81

Frank Schaeffer:

All the nonsense about how God permits suffering because of our free will -- blah, blah, blah, -- is just scared religious people making excuses for their mean and/or grossly incompetent God.  What is the source of comfort, if any?  It's not found by making excuses for God or for Nature.  It's found in the reality of living by the light of the gift of love.

Patience With God, p. 193

Alexandra Petri:

Poetry revives if attacked.  It grows stronger.  It likes the fight.

"'Poetry is not dead,' says poetry"

Anne Lamott:

Gratitude is peace.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 65

Rita Mae Brown:

Do I want to write a disaster movie or a testosterone saga?  If it would let me pay off the mortgage, I suppose I'd write one, but if I had to make a diet of it, I wouldn't do it.  That's not why I'm on earth.  I want to write about real people in real situations and I prefer the comic tradition.

Rita Will, p. 438

Robert Frost:

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.  No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

Ellen DeGeneres:

Our flaws are what make us human.  If we can accept them as part of who we are, they really don't even have to be an issue.

Seriously...I'm Kidding, p. 7

Walter Farley:

I believe that half the trouble in the world comes from people asking "What have I achieved?" rather than "What have I enjoyed?"

Frank Schaeffer:

Lucy loving her bath and smiling while she kicks and splashes all the water out of the baby tub is also "why" water exists.  The pleasure we take in a baby's pleasure might be a hint of what our meaning is too: the pleasure of God enjoying our pleasure at existing in the midst of, as (Daniel) Dennett calls it, "all this wonderful stuff."

Patience With God, p. 66

Alexandra Petri:

Poetry is too big and too variable to kill.  It is like Proteus; whenever you think [you] have it in a chokehold, it shifts form.

"'Poetry is not dead,' says poetry"

Anne Lamott:

There's freedom in hitting bottom, in seeing that you won't be able to save or rescue your daughter, her spouse, his parents, or your career, relief in admitting you've reached the place of great unknowing.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 14

Rita Mae Brown:

There is no substitute for experience, regardless of brilliance.

Rita Will, p. 438

Robert Frost:

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Steve Jobs:

The goal is not to be the richest man in the cemetery.  It's not my goal, anyway.  In the broadest context, the goal is to seek enlightenment -- however you define it.

TXBlue08:

I do not want religion to go away. I only want religion to be kept at home or in church where it belongs. It’s a personal effect, like a toothbrush or a pair of shoes. It’s not something to be used or worn by strangers.

"Why I Raise My Children Without God"

Frank Schaeffer:

If I'm to pass some sort of exam on what it "means to be a Christian," theology and belief aren't relevant to the test.  What is relevant is what Genie and my children can tell you about what I'm like to live with, and whether my years spent on a sacramental path have made me less of a self-centered idiot.  That is what faith in God is about, just as that is what being a moral atheist is about.

Patience With God, p. 44

Alexandra Petri:

You can tell that a[n artistic] medium is still vital by posing the question: Can it change anything?

"Is poetry dead?"

Anne Lamott:

My three prayers are variations on Help, Thanks, Wow.  That's all I ever need, besides the silence, the pain, and the pause sufficient for me to stop, close my eyes, and turn inward.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 8

Rita Mae Brown:

Politics is war without killing.  You want your program to succeed.  It's a battle and often that battle is filled with bravery, cowardice, greed and heapings of dishonesty.  It's a bare-knuckle fight for power.  You want the power to enact your program.  If you're a lightweight, you want the power for self-aggrandizement or money.  The real warriors fight for their program just as military warriors fight for territory.

Rita Will, p. 272

Robert Frost:

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Steve Jobs:

I think we're all happier when we have a little music in our lives.

Tim Kreider:

One of the hazards of hanging around with writers is that they may write about you.

Frank Schaeffer:

Since there is no there, there -- no tradition -- all that governs the evangelical/fundamentalist empire-builders is the self-appointed Church Lady Brigade.  You always have moralizing busybodies sniffing around your butt to see if you're pure enough.  Good for dogs, maybe; bad for writers.  When I left the evangelical/fundamentalist world, I found that I was no longer looking over my shoulder wondering what people -- in other words, the Church Ladies -- would think.

Patience With God, p. 100

Alexandra Petri:

And this might be the silver lining for poets. The kind of news you get from poems, as William Carlos Williams has it, must come from somewhere. And there is a similar hunger for poetry that persists. We get it in diluted doses in song lyrics. Song lyrics are incomplete poems, as Sondheim notes in the book of his own. If it is complete on the page, it makes a shoddy lyric.  But there is still wonderful music to be found in those words. We get it in rap. If we really want to read it, it is everywhere.

"Is poetry dead?"

Anne Lamott:

If you told me you had said to God, "It is all hopeless, and I don't have a clue if You exist, but I could use a hand," it would almost bring tears to my eyes, tears of pride in you, for the courage it takes to get real -- really real.  It would make me want to sit next to you at the dinner table.

Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 7