There are moments in an election battle, as in life, when all the possible pathways save one are suddenly closed; when what felt like a wide distribution of probable outcomes narrows to the inevitable.

The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken away from you,' he said, 'by the grace of God.' (Walter Brueggemann)

Every one of us is called upon, perhaps many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job...And onward full-tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another--that is surely the basic instinct...Crying out: High tide! Time to move out into the glorious debris. Time to take this life for what it is.

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.

If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business.

It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

My life is a pitiful, mechanical thing without a past, like a little wind-up car, ready to run in any direction someone points me.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what to hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.

How could two people get the same set of parts and make such different constructions? But then, there was rising. That had to be taken into account. What could a doormat rear but a pair of boots?

No matter what happens on God's green earth, Father acts like it's a movie he's already seen and we're just dumb for not knowing how it comes out.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain. Almost no one gets a chance to alter the course of human events on purpose, in the exact same way they wish for it to be altered.