I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be.

The most powerful moral influence is example.

If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.

I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience.

All -isms end up in schisms.

We all carry it within us: supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted, and cannot be destroyed.

God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus.

The object of pilgrimage is not rest and recreation – to get away from it all. To set out on a pilgrimage is to throw down a challenge to everyday life.

At the center of the religious life is a peculiar kind of joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful ordeals, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome.

Beware of the differences that blind us to the unity that binds us.

Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.

We don't choose our wildest dreams. They choose us.

I've never studied the Japanese. That's something that must have crept in there. But the Japanese are my biggest clients. They seem to like the elemental quality.

A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.

Some people say, therefore, that violence and war are inevitable. I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive behavior.

Almost anything is better than three network TV outlets completely controlling the national discourse with their nightly broadcasts. We've moved a long way from that, and that's important.

Did Mad freakin' Max just call me irritating?

It [the internet] probably has the effect of weakening personal associations.

Laws should be made, not against quacks but against superstition.

I try to not be self-conscious in my writing process.

If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.