Prophets are those who take life as it is and expand it. They refuse to shrink a vision of tomorrow to the boundaries of yesterday.

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.

Whatever you are waiting for won’t come to you

Everything I hated about L.A. I'm beginning to crave. L.A. is a place where you live behind a gate, you get in a car, your interaction with the public is minimal. I used to hate that.

I think that the job of art and culture is to jump on that time and realize that it's there and to push it just a little bit faster.

Conservative activists want [Stephen] Bannon, somebody who has spent much of the past two years trying to destroy speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

Where you are is a result of who you were, but where you go depends entirely on who you choose to be.

Whether one moves slowly or with speed, the one who is a seeker will be a finder.

Barack Obama is a street corner community organizer who is using the office of the presidency here to virtually undermine it.

The appointment [in Harvard] gave me economic safety, writerly support, and intellectual self-respectplus eight months to myself every year.

I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.

Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.