A dog can't think that much about what he's doing, he just does what feels right.

With these startling honesties glinting up at us from history's broken mirror, it strikes me that this is worth shouting from the rooftops: We could be wrong this time, again. The enemy may not be exactly what we think. It may be a force that resides in many quarters, including inside our skin, in our very words, the questions we frame, the things we love most, the things we can't live without. Our greatest dread may be our salvation.

Poor thing, thought Garnett, to have to commit yourself so hard to one moment of poor judgment.

I hadn't thought before about how self-sufficiency could turn on you in old age or sickness.

If his decision to keep us here in the Congo wasn't right, then what else might he be wrong about? It has opened up in my heart a sickening world of doubts and possibilities, where before I had only faith in my father and love for the Lord. Without that rock of certainty underfoot, the Congo is a fearsome place to have to sink or swim.

I needed no snake to tell me I didn't belong in that family or house, or life. I was the tree of knowledge.

Like the saying goes: They passed out the brains, he thought they said trains and he missed his.

People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.

The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.

I believe that there are parts to human nature that cannot be reached by either legislation or education, but require the power of God to deal with.

Just as breathing exercises help integrate body and mind, writing is a kind of psycho-neural muscular activity which helps bridge and integrate the conscious and subconscious minds. Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought and helps break the whole into parts.

Is it logical that two people can disagree and that both can be right? It's not logical: it's psychological. And it's very real.