Today's Catholic church seems to reward authoritarian personalities who are clearly ill, violent, sexually obsessed and unable to remember the past.

I didn't learn to swim until I was 21 or something because I grew up in the mountains in Wyoming and all the water is glacier runoff and cold.

It is precisely the despair of our times that convinces me that a renaissance is right around the corner.

I think you've got to take your time and make sure you're making choices that are smart for you.

The prophets preach . . . that pleasure, not will-power and coercion, is how you most deeply transform people.

Pain destroys the illusions of false, that is, elitist pleasures. It burns from the inside out. It, therefore, sensitizes us to what is truly beautiful in life.

Animals teach us about the animals in ourselves. We need their spirits.