The vision of a culture lies in what becomes its major institutions, in what it remembers as its most impacting events, in who it sees as its heroes.

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.

It is only when you understand that God is in everyone that you can appreciate and treat them differently

To be full of being is to live as a body-soul. One name for the experience of full being is joy.

Some people say home is where you come from. But I think it’s a place you need to find, like it’s scattered and you pick pieces of it up along the way.

Crisis doesn't create character; it reveals it.

I loved being in my own head so much, it was getting harder and harder being with other people.

Comedy is tragedy revisited or hostility. It is mock hostility, of course, or it would be ugly; we would have a war.

I read all the speeches of the pope, his commentaries, and if the pope continues this way, I will go back to praying and go back to the church, and I'm not joking.

Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.

One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice.

I will say, the performers in the musical are some of the most super-talented people I've ever seen.