We are free when we are not the slave of our impulses, but rather their master. Taking inward distance, we thus become the authors of our own dramas rather than characters in them.

Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it's my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different.

Imagine a man besottedly in love: he won't waste time speculating whether other women equally merit his affection.

...but with my clamoring ego solidly in place, I considered the title, 'Memories of a Failed Nobody'.

I have a body and I have a soul. And my body belongs to the faith - in fact, the church - into which it was born, the Methodist Church.

God has to speak to each person in their own language, in their own idioms. Take Spanish, Chinese. You can express the same thought, but to different people you have to use a different language. Its the same in religion.

Plato described ordinary life as unthinking, lived in a dim cave of shadowy reflections, but said that it is possible to leave the cave and see things in sunlit clarity as they actually are.