I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music.

When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all.

When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters. There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. And I believe they may be the things that mean most to you, and that even your own child would have to know in order to know you well at all.

Any father…must finally give his child up to the wilderness and trust to the providence of God. It seems almost a cruelty for one generation to beget another when parents can secure so little for their children, so little safety, even in the best circumstances. Great faith is required to give the child up, trusting God to honor the parents’ love for him by assuring that there will indeed be angels in that wilderness.

There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.

The model for our early bankruptcy laws was Deuteronomy, the idea that, under certain circumstances - in Deuteronomy, it is simply the passage of seven years' time - people are released from debt, simply because they are released from debt. No more debt. You start over again. This has been a very powerful model in this country. It's being destroyed now. People talk about how much new employment, new wealth, and so on are continuously generated in this country.

My politics, and my religion as well, are based entirely on the loveliness and value of ordinary human lives. The creaky apparatus called politics shelters or oppresses or threatens these lives, and is therefore of interest.