The roots of any evil deed can be traced to the perpetrator's refusal to experience pain.

There's no original evil left in the world. Everyone's just recycling pain. (257)

God is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples. God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces, which is why sharing pain freely feels very much like love, and may be the same thing. (207)

What about my rights? What about a person's privacy? Did all that just go to hell after 9/11?

We are, all of us, crippled and twisted. Most of us strive desperately to keep our grotesqueries out of sight and mind. Our suffering is transformed by an alchemy of the soul into addiction, ulcers, strokes, hatred, even war.

But insight doesn't necessarily produce self-control. Sometimes you just see your destructiveness more clearly.

The truth will set you free. Unless you're guilty.