If professional religious leaders can [no longer] instruct..., our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged world.

I learned a lot from both, initially Jewish and Muslim theologians that had been missing, perhaps from my rather parochial Catholic upbringing.

The more aggressive our ideologies become, the more aggressive our discourse whether it's in the United States, from Washington D.C., or whether it's from Tehran, or from some underground Al-Qaeda cell. The more aggressive that discourse is, the more people of moderate persuasion have to organize and speak a voice of compassion. That means to feel with the other.

You put yourself in the receptive frame of mind with which we approach music or poetry, which you can measure the difference on a neurological scanner.

Religion isn’t about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.

Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death.

We are addicted to our egotism, our likes and dislikes and prejudices, and depend upon them for our own sense of identity.