My family says they are proud of me. Of course, I would rather hear this than the contrary, but I cannot say that I am proud of myself, so I find that I cannot 'talk about it'.

...my ability to trust had been shattered into splinters, its fragmented shards slicing through every darkened recess of my mind, his absolution won my over all the more.

We were not told how Alexander the Great was the last person in history to successfully 'pacify' what would become Afghanistan, over 2, 000 years ago.

My mother describes me as 'a real hero . . . just like your grandfather'. But I do not know what to do with this accolade for her son, other than let her have moment, or it helps her back here.

Nothing restricts your peace and happiness more than your limiting self-beliefs and fears.

I care about strangers when they're abstractions, but I feel almost nothing when they're literally in front of me.

The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them.

When you inquire 'Who am I?' if you are honest, you'll notice that it takes you right back to silence instantly. The brain doesn't have an answer, so all of a sudden there is silence.

I remember my mom dressed like Janis Joplin.

So for, you know, for a good 20 years now I've been involved with veterans and soldiers and in support of them no matter what they're doing.

I have long admired Ron Whitehead. He is crazy as nine loons, and his poetry is a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics

Art should be waged like war.

If it ever seems to us that the world is a place where bad things only happen to good people, it is because we still believe that bad things happening to bad people is a good thing.

The church may hold whatever it holds with regard to clerical celibacy.