[Tibet] never sought any territory. All it wanted is the conquest of the soul, that people should attain a kind of inner sovereignty, inner independence, inner freedom. And inner strength to attain the absolute.

Words can be turned into spears. They can be turned into prayers. It's a strange world that you are in. But you deal with words.

For me democracy is the only way of life. The opposite is dictatorship or anarchy.

Oh, it is not death that frightens me, but the impossibility of imparting some meaning to my past.

I remember one day I came home and shouted to my grandmother, "Grandma, Sarah is pregnant!" Poor Sarah! For weeks before I had read how difficult it was for her to get pregnant. "Grandma! I have news for you!" "What did you learn?" "I have news, Grandma: Sarah is pregnant!" [Genesis 16 - 21].

For one who is indifferent, life itself is a prison. Any sense of community is external or, even worse, nonexistent. Thus, indifference means solitude. Those who are indifferent do not see others. They feel nothing for others and are unconcerned with what might happen to them. They are surrounded by a great emptiness. Filled by it, in fact. They are devoid of all hope as well as imagination. In other words, devoid of any future.

The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin and it was as if Juliek's soul had become the bow. He was playing his life...He played that which he would never play again.