It is not difficult to find a religious justification for killing.

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.

One must be a lotus to emerge from mucky waters clean.

It's all right if things don't change today. We're gonna keep doing what we do. The world can either catch up or not.

All wars eventually act as boomerangs and the victor suffers as much as the vanquished.

Everyone wants to write a book. Very few people are able to do it.

The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal battle between right and wrong.

I write because I want to end my loneliness. Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances.

Journalists don't retire, writers don't retire. I'm still hoping for that other big story. There's always one just around the corner.

You can't afford to live your life with regrets.

I have a living will and I have friends, and I have money and I have hope.

Life is a state of constant radiation and absorption; to exist is to radiate; to exist is to be the recipient of radiations.