I know how I like my house. I like it cute and cozy and a little funky, and I like it to feel lived in and worn, and I like the things inside of it to work. That's all. And for me, it's fine that my house's interior suggests that I might not spend every waking moment thinking about how it looks.

Pain is mandatory for all of us. It's what teaches us. Suffering is what's optional. That's what happens when we try to skip over the pain.

If you ask a woman who she is, she'll tell you who she serves and sometimes what she does. But that isn't the whole story.

I just think that if we are going to call ourselves pro-life, we must also agree that starvation and poverty and disease and immigration and health care for all and war and peace and the environment are also pro-life issues.

I wrote in my first book that I was broken, and now it just makes me mad every time. This is why writing words in books is so precarious. This is why Jesus only wrote in the sand, right? I just - I hate that I wrote that.

I'm nothing if not a tangled, colorful ball of contradictions.

When people express opinions that differ from yours, take it as a chance to grow. Seek to understand over being understood. Be curious, not defensive. The only way to disarm another human being is by listening.

Sometimes the rewards of risk don't leave us wrecked. Sometimes we find our passion, our purpose, courage, connection, and comfort. Every good thing in our lives is a direct result of risk.

To me, full-time mothering felt like way too much and yet not nearly enough. Lost in a landslide of diapers, birthday parties, and others' needs, I ached to reestablish myself.

I've never believed in or understood romantic love. Love at first sight was always a complete joke to me.

When I was detoxing from social media, I realized that I was thinking in status updates. It seemed I had trained my brain to translate everything I experienced throughout the day into 140 characters or less.

We'll tell fear it can come along with us in our minivan, okay? But we'll just tell fear it can't drive. Sometimes we'll tell it to not even talk. Like when we tell our kids, 'Enough. No words.' We're going to play the quiet game with fear. Fear is not the boss of us.

The truth is that cleaning up socks and trying to get someone to really listen to you is marriage. It's less sweep you off your feet and more sweep the kitchen four times a day. Like everything good in life, it's 98% back-breaking work and 2% moments that make the work worthwhile.

We'd better not speak against misogyny if, in the same breath, we're not also speaking against transphobia and homophobia and racism and classism and poverty. This is one fight. It always has been.

We're told that to be successful girls, we have to be small and quiet. Yet to be successful humans, we have to become big and have a voice. There's an inherent contradiction.

If grace isn't shocking and countercultural and scandalous and a little ridiculous, then it's not Grace.

When in doubt, I choose love above any particular ideas offered to me about faith.

We are all trained by Disney to believe that the wedding is the finish line, but the wedding is just another starting line. In light of this fact, we should quit the huge, fancy, debt-inducing weddings.

One of the reasons we stay so alone in our lives is because we're ashamed to talk about the hard stuff. It's as simple as that. We're all in pain in different ways, and we don't get the help we need because we're too ashamed to talk about the pain.

Making sensible family rules around cell phones and driving is a way to love yourself, your marriage, your children, and the world well.

My greatest fear is that I'll fail my kids.

I ask only child-free pals for parenting advice because they're the only ones sane and well-rested enough to have any real insight.

I can't even carpe 15 minutes in a row. So a whole diem is out of the question.

Many of us spend the first part of our adult lives becoming - stepping into the roles we take on so that they come to define our lives. But I've learned that we don't really grow up until we unbecome.

Questions are like gifts - it's the thought behind them that the receiver really feels. We have to know the receiver to give the right gift and to ask the right question. Generic gifts and questions are all right, but personal gifts and questions feel better.

I've seen my name on marquees and bowed to standing ovations. I've also been called a fraud, a mental case, a heretic. People all over the country wait in line to hug me or curse me.

The fact that we define ourselves by our roles can be an admirable thing - it's how we build a life and make a living. But it's also precarious. Roles change. Sometimes overnight.

I hated writing 'Love Warrior.' It's the hardest thing I've every written. I cried.

The Internet is neither good nor bad. It's neutral - it becomes for each of us exactly what we bring to it.

We are - each and every one of us - unlearning misogyny. It's going to take some time. But be aware and active of your prejudices. Notice when they kick in and resist. Fight to stay soft and open. Step back and squint hard.

Do not measure your marriage by how much love you feel today: measure it by how much love you've offered today.

I am not, at the end of the day, a mother, a wife, a writer, an activist, a friend. I am a child of God. That's who I was when I came into this world and who I'll be when I leave it. No one can take that from me.

The closer you get to people who are different than you, the more you learn that we're all same.

I used to choose friends based on similarity in age and life stage, but I've learned that those were the wrong criteria. Trying to live life exclusively alongside others our own age is like attempting to climb Mt. Everest without a Sherpa. It's a little dangerous.

I'm not big on faith rules, but if I had to choose one, it would be that every person must choose a faith issue upon which to hang her hat that requires her to change - not somebody else.

The most important thing on Earth is for all of us to make this sentence true: Compassion is what people do.

I think that in order to parent effectively, we are going to have to admit two things: We can't keep our children safe. We can't accept the fact that we can't keep our children safe.

Habits are learned. And children learn their habits by watching what we do, not by listening to what we say. So we have to stop talking and teaching and preaching and just go do.

If we are going to ask for our daily bread, we've got to take the time to receive it and eat it. God provide, but we've got to slow down long enough to taste and see.

I realized I didn't just want to parent children in my own little home but to mother the whole world. What's the point of gaining influence if you're not going to use it?

Love is kind, right? It's not about calling someone out on every little thing you feel.

It blows my mind when I actually consider that men are as human as I am. How can you possibly be as human and have all of the thoughts and feelings that I have and never be able to talk about it, ever? Guys are in desperate need of truth telling. They are in desperate need of a revolution.

When folks decide they love any institution more than the individual souls inside them, they're missing the mark.

Sometimes when you love someone like a mother loves her child, that love can turn into fear. It happens to me all the time. I am so afraid that the world will not be kind to my children.

One day we will finally see that when we reject any person or group of people, we reject a part of our very selves. All are one. All are in. All are God's beloved children with a place at the table.

We should live out our particular brand of faith, sure - but we should never force our brand of faith upon anyone else. All violence starts with the desire to change others and then never, ever ends.

I believe in people because I believe in God. I think God knew what God was doing when God made each of us.

Often, we need to ignore the words people say and attend to their underlying, urgent, life or death questions: Am I valuable? Am I loved? The great thing is that the answer is easy: Yes! The answer is always yes. We don't have to think too hard.

I am not bound to spend my precious days on Earth trying to keep up with the Joneses - because the Joneses are really just a bunch of folks in conference rooms changing 'trends' rapidly to create fake monthly emergencies for us.

It is suggested to us a million times a day that our bodies are projects. They aren't. Our lives are. Our spirituality is. Our relationships are. Our work is.