I could hardly be responsible for my actions when everyone around me gave me every opportunity to sink to their low expectations.
God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.
Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. . . . . get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.
. . . morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe. Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number. . . . I do not ask to see the reason for it all: I ask only to share the wonder of it all.
When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.
Say you are doing a portrait and the face is perfectly done, but the rest of it is done in brushstrokes. That is sort of like what might happen in the films.
Two people who are a little bit deluded in each other's favour. That's what love is, isn't it?
It was really bizarre. I was learning how to be a black guy from a white guy pretending to be a black man.
I am crazy for dessert. I eat everything. No one should be denied anything. . . just don't eat the whole thing.