It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.

The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.

Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.