Each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up.

The kind of teaching that transforms people does not happen if the student’s inward teacher is ignored… we can speak to the teacher within our students only when we are on speaking terms with the teacher within ourselves.

The academic bias against subjectivity not only forces our students to write poorly ("It is believed...," instead of, "I believe..."), it deforms their thinking about themselves and their world. In a single stroke, we delude our students into believing that bad prose turns opinions into facts and we alienate them from their own inner lives.

Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known.

Why does a literary scholar study the world of "fiction"? To show us that the facts can never be understood except in communion with the imagination.

Mentoring is a mutuality that requires more than meeting the right teacher: the teacher must meet the right student.

I like to say that before we can create an external space in which to receive people, we have to create an internal space in which to receive them.