Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all there is in a language he has barely mastered.

If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to. And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you.

You have to keep cracking yourself open or you become a parody of yourself.

I think that really what our training, what our culture, our religious institutions, our educational and cultural institutions should be about is preparing the heart for that journey outside of the cage of the ribs.

Love is not a victory march

So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed, It would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed, It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star, I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

As I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.