Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.

... as we age we have not only to readdress earlier developmental crises but also somehow to find the way to three affirmations that may seem to conflict. ... We have to affirm our own life. We have to affirm our own death. And we have to affirm love, both given and received.

Learning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with patterns, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity.

Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.

There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors.

Jazz exemplifies artistic activity that is at once individual and communal, performance that is both repetitive and innovative, each participant sometimes providing background support and sometimes flying free.

We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.