I used to hate religion, I loathed it in my angry days.

It's quite common for a Sufi mystic to cry in ecstasy that he's neither a Jew, a Christian, nor a Muslim. He is at home equally in a synagogue, a mosque, a temple, or a church because when one's glimpsed the divine, one's left these man-made distinctions behind.

Zionism was originally a rebellion against religious Judaism and the PLO Charter was essentially secularist. But because the conflict was allowed to fester without a resolution, religion got sucked into the escalating cycle of violence and became part of the problem.

Creation stories had never been regarded as historically accurate; their purpose was therapeutic. But once you start reading Genesis as scientifically valid, you have bad science and bad religion.

We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.

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

there is no ascent to the heights without prior descent into darkness, no new life without some form of death.