A mystic is a person who sees the facts as inadequate.

Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?

When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledge that they cannot take use all the way.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take.

When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.

If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words.

I rebel against death, yet I know that it is how I respond to death's inevitability that is going to make me less or more fully alive.