Religion is so focused on family. These days, for many people, being gay is also focused on family.

I believe very deeply that this beauty I call the soul is not a random occurrence. I don't know what its meaning is at some larger level, but I know that it has meaning.

When you believe that you cannot stitch your own heart back together, go to work on the hearts of other people; there is no surer way to repair yourself than to repair them.

There is a line that I always loved from Lucretius. He said, "The sublime is the art of exchanging easier for more difficult pleasures." The presumption of that formulation is that the more difficult pleasures are actually better than the easier pleasures. That is why one makes the exchange.

The strengthening of faith, I think, is the ultimate goal of organized religion altogether.

I think an awful lot of the diplomatic problems that exist in the world come from people assuming that their society is the one with a purchase on truth.

The campaign against polygamy, around which a lot of anti-Mormon sentiment was organized, seems horrific to me.