Quotes about Inspiration

By the great Persian mystical poet Rumi: "Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.

When Sam was six or so, he explained to me why we call God God: Because when you see something so great, you just go, 'God!

Every one of us sometimes needs a tour guide to remind us how big and deep life is meant to be.

I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.

Whether it's Mt. Sinai, a pasture, a library, the creek down the road, a liveness, or whatever you want to call it, the song is above us, around us, within us. We transcend the incessant and wearying yammer of bullshit. Transcendence means you go from judgement, separation from life in yourself, to feeling at one-ish with the universe. We hook into something bigger than we are - truer than the self-serving stories we make up about life and ourselves.

I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer.

If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours and you get to tell it.

So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer - please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written.

It may strike you as a small miracle that you have someone in your life, whose taste you admire, who will tell you the truth and help you stay on the straight and narrow, or find your way back to it if you are lost.

Love and goodness and the world's beauty and humanity are the reasons we have hope.

It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born." That line came back to me, from out of nowhere, and I decided to practice radical hope, hope in the face of not having a clue.

Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.