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.

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.

Erik Erikson has commented: Potentially creative men like (Bernard) Shaw build the personal fundament of their work during a self-decreed moratorium, during which they often starve themselves, socially, erotically, and, at last but not least, nutritionally, in order to let the grosser weeds die out, and make way for the growth of their inner garden.

True citizens are not the audience of their government, nor its consumers; they are its makers.

We are each born into a situation-a particular body (its race, sex, health...), a set of ancestors, a community, a nation-and born into the stories told of each of these.

Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.

Uncovering secrets is apocalyptic in the simple sense (the Greek root means ‘an uncovering’). In this case, it lifts the shame covers. It allows articulation to enter where silence once ruled.