Wisdom is something that comes, little by little, through a lot of listening.

To love someone is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance.

Love doesn't mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.

Each person is sacred, no matter what his or her culture, religion, handicap, or fragility. Each person is created in God’s image; each one has a heart, a capacity to love and to be loved.

Community is not an ideal; it is people. It is you and I. In community we are called to love people just as they are with their wounds and their gifts, not as we want them to be.

Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness

One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals.

I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.

Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us

Prayer is like a secret garden made up of silence and rest and inwardness. But there are a thousand and one doors into this garden and we all have to find our own.

Love is to recognize that the other person is a person, is precious, is important and has value.

My greatest life lesson has been to not wait for the opportunities to come to me. I realize how important it is to be proactive and to create the opportunities myself.

I love anyone who breaks the rules, and musicians always break the rules - in an aggressive way.

The thing about politics is to plan 10 years ahead, and assume every year is your last.

Human life is beyond comprehension.

God makes the life fertile by disappointments, as he makes the ground fertile by frosts.

I'm half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That's why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I've seen so many.

I have really done so few bad things that they have to keep harping on the old ones [.]

Nonviolent non-co-operation, I am convinced, is a sacred duty at times.

I don't know if she's making the right choice, but it's not my choice to make. I promise to support her, whatever she decides. Because that's what sisters do.

You naturally love those who are dear to you, and you must learn to give that kind of love to the whole world.