Science may not be as intimate as the medical profession; nonetheless, it certainly is a community in which ideas are often shared as contributions, not as proprietary things.

For the slow labor of realizing a potential gift the artist must retreat to those Bohemias, halfway between the slums and the library, where life is not counted by the clock and where the talented may be sure they will be ignored until that time, if it ever comes, when their gifts are viable enough to be set free and survive in the world.

The gift finds the man attractive who stands with an empty bowl he does not own.

We are only alive to the degree that we can let ourselves be moved.

To be a great teacher, you can't simply be looking at how to earn your income. And with a priest or spiritual leader - there's another relationship that makes those lives what they are. And in each of these cases you'll find elements of gift exchange thriving, and you'll also find a tension around it.

An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.

A gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift. The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation.