Freedom, in childhood, may be the right to be totally self-centered. … But freedom in old age is the ability to be the best of the self I have developed during all those years.

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.

What the dead had no speech for, when living, They can tell you, being dead: the communicationOf the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

I think it's up to writers to write stuff that is compelling enough that people want to watch.

When you have a gutless Congress a lawless president can do pretty much what he chooses.

I don't know any family that doesn't have a story somewhere. Besides, it you didn't have those things in life, you'd be so bland.

He that always waits upon God is ready whenever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts even; he is a happy man who to lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die.

Whether hunting is right or wrong, a spiritual experience, or an outlet for the killer instinct, one thing it is not is a sport.

I can't find someone funny whom I don't like. Hitler told great jokes. I didn't find it funny at all.

Some actors - you work with them once and don't even think about working with them again.

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man... , But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians - wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage.

The hope for me going back into television - after doing what will have been two years of radio - is to bring that authenticity with me. And, to not have the visual be overpowering the content.