Perhaps the most profound miracle of all is living through something we thought would kill us.

And when enough hardship happens within a small circumference, the roads to all the familiar places are little more than crisscrossing scars. By the time every direction you could take at a four-way stop—right, left, straight ahead, or reverse—carries the stomach-turning scent of carnage, moving can mean surviving.

The pain will not kill you. It will be a reminder that you are very much alive, engaged, and that you loved with abandon.

I don't believe that rejection, in and of itself, is a stronghold. It's our reaction to rejection that determines whether or not we become bound by it.

My reputation grows with every failure.

Sometimes on Wednesday I'll read something that I wrote on Tuesday and I'll think, "This is crap. I hate it and I hate myself." Then I'll re-read the identical passage on Thursday. To my astonishment, it has become brilliant overnight. Ignore false negatives. Ignore false positives. Both are Resistance. Keep working.

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.   The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.

We're all going to make mistakes; they're inevitable. It's what you do after these mistakes that matters.

Out of defeat can come the best in human nature. As Christians face storms of adversity, they may rise with more beauty. They are like trees that grow on mountain ridges -- battered by winds, yet trees in which we find the strongest wood.

While disappointment and failure aren't identical, they often occur together, and both can hold us back from God's best for our lives.

Discouragement is the opposite of faith. It is Satan's device to thwart the work of God in your life.

Christ never told his disciples that they would get an Academy Award for their performances, but He did tell them to expect to have troubles.