If we want to create a viable, peaceful world, we've got to integrate compassion into the gritty realities of 21st century life.

It's a great event to get outside and enjoy nature. I find it very exciting no matter how many times I see bald eagles.

Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.

Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate.

Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and has something unique to teach us.

I like silence; I'm a gregarious loner and without the solitude, I lose my gregariousness.

Compassion is not an option. It's the key to our survival.

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.

Religion isn’t about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.

I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions.

Surely it's better to love others, however messy and imperfect the involvement, than to allow one's capacity for love to harden.

Who am I?What is my mission?

We are not sure what we will become, only what we want to and don’t want to. We often become what we never thought we could, then we become fine with that.

He who has no opinion of his own but depends upon the opinion and taste of others is a slave.

It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

We have no way of knowing what lays ahead for us in the future. All we can do is use the information at hand to make the best decision possible.

[Using humor to explore serious issues] disarms people. It's a way in. It's gentle, but at the same time it's subversive, and I like that duality.

Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.

As the 'critic of color,' I'm frequently asked to review Indian and Pakistani writers.

Never look backwards or you'll fall down the stairs.

Raoul: Age and treachery! Neal: Youth and skill!