“ I wish I had thrown out the bathroom scale at age 16. Weighing yourself every morning is like waking up and asking Dick Cheney to validate your sense of inner worth. ”

“ Pay attention to the beauty surrounding you. ”

“ Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost - his or her wildest, most messed-up children - the way you'd ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter in juvenile hall. ”

“ A whole lot of us believers, of all different religions, are ready to turn back the tide of madness by walking together, in both the dark and the light - in other words, through life - registering voters as we go, and keeping the faith. ”

“ The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do. ”

“ I accidentally forgot to graduate from college. ”

“ We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children. ”

“ Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner's manual, with whatever modicum of grace and good humor we can manage. ”

“ I have a very dark sense of humor. I swear. I have a very playful relationship with Jesus. ”

“ We must not inflict life on children who will be resented we must not inflict unwanted children on society. ”