Peace depends upon compromise among peoples who must live together long after our speeches are over, and our votes have been counted.
Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.
Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.
We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.
Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego.
I couldn't concentrate on music. So I made the choice to give up my career as a musician in the frontline to deal with the business.
Suddenly it makes sense again. In no haze of mindfulness, staring down at this snow-covered quilt of America, I am the stars exploding. Voice shot down to hell, half sick, half recovered, alive and well and ready. The unknown for now will remain as such and in this moment that feeling is not one of suspension. It is the hopeful unknown. Reaching into the future could only be good now as the past is wrapping itself in ribbons and pleasant packing paper, rarely to be revisited.
I am very bad at expressing tender sentiments. The very word 'love' frightens me.
I want you to like me, but I don't care if you don't.