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.

An authentic spirituality does not cater to culture; it calls culture to accountability.

A friend is a bird who can understand you and sing along with you even when you lose your voice.

I love the idea of birds having human qualities...I think all humans want to be birds so we can fly.

The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is the hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ.

I just want to work with good filmmakers and do good projects that mean something to me and play interesting characters. That's really it.

In form and feature, face and limb, I grew so like my brother That folks got taking me for him And each for one another. For one of us was born a twin And not a soul knew which. . . .

Up in this air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.

Sometimes God leads us to a place where we have nowhere to turn but to Him; our only option is to trust Him.

Dear, dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms?

The country will survive Obama, but it cannot survive the abject ignorance that elected him.

The Planet drifts to random insect doom.