Love ... is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.

Our society is monstrously disjunctive, at once so efficient in war and so inefficient in caring for the welfare of its members. It is frightening to see people rooting in garbage pails on streets, living in cardboard crates under bridges, while their government wages war. Even when there is an emergency in a household, decent parents do not forget to feed the children.

the more visible my work became, the less visible I grew to myself.

Humility is the daughter of truth.

The finest teaching touches in a student a spring neither teacher nor student could possibly have preconceived.

the knowledge of personal failure ... is the invaluable predicate of all honest compassion.

The end of parenthood is implicit in its beginning: separation.