Love will push every button, try every faith, challenge every strength, trigger every weakness, mock every value, and then leave you there to die. And then you will be ready to be born at last, to become a soul who is strong enough to take love on. You'll be a romantic mystic who has achieved the elements: you endured the flames of love, you were baptized in the waters of love, and now you can soar like only a mystic can through the skies and skin of a lover's heart.

I try to be self-disciplined with my thoughts. It’s our thoughts that matter most, and all the rest falls into line behind that: if I remember who I really am and why I’m on the earth, then I more naturally want to treat my body like a temple and so forth.

Life is a constant back-and-forth. We take a breath in and then we breathe out. The same is true for the culture as a whole.

What emerges from the silence is the deafening sound of an old world disintegrating.

The wisdom that comes from having experienced heartbreak cannot be bequeathed; it can only be gained through experience. And having truly felt it, we are far more likely to have compassion for others. Anything that takes us close to true compassion takes us closer to what will one day be an experience of even greater joy.

We are here to repair the world. I grew up thinking that was what everybody was trying to do.

The Founders didn't mention political parties when they wrote the Constitution, and George Washington in essence warned us against them in his Farewell Address.