Benedict sets up a community, a family. And families, the honest among us will admit, are risky places to be if perfection is what you are expecting in life.

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all.

Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside.

We talk religion in a world that worships the bread but does not distribute it, that practices ritual rather than righteousness, that confesses but does not repent.

Grief is a sign that we loved something more than ourselves. . . . Grief makes us worthy to suffer with the rest of the world.

Compassion makes no distinction between friends and enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners. Compassion is the gate to human community.

When souls really touch, it is forever. Then space and time disappear, and all that remains is the consciousness that we are not alone in life.

Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.

Oppressors do not get to be oppressors in a single sweep. They manage it because little by little, we make them that. We overlook too much in the beginning and wonder why we lost control in the end.

Compassion is the ability to understand how difficult it is for people to be the best of what they want to be at all times.

We could get kinky and see how bats and rats make love, he suggested in a whisper, warm breath against her neck.You are a sick man, Jacques. Very, very sick.

Losing someone close to you is more haunting than a life of cursed solitude.~The Moon Master

I was obsessed with romance. When I was in high school, I saw 'Doctor Zhivago' every day from the day it opened until the day it left the theater.

Well, I've thought many times when my career was in the toilet, that I was going to have to seriously consider getting another job, I don't know what I'd do.

I've always loved butterflies, because they remind us that it's never too late to transform ourselves.

To get into just those situations where sham virtues will not suffice, but rather where, as with the ropedancer on his rope, one either falls or stands--or gets down.

Tis never for their wisdom that one loves the wisest...

It's always challenging to go into a role.

Anytime you commit sin and God deals with you, you have the opportunity to confess it. If you don't confess it, you only have one option but to cover it up.

Having scored 298 and still hitting a six is something unimaginable and you need to be a genius for that.