The answer comes to me through studying the lives of the Rosa Parks and the Vaclav Havels and the Nelson Mandelas and the Dorothy Days of this world. These are people who have come to understand that no punishment that anybody could lay on us could possibly be worse than the punishment we lay on ourselves by conspiring in our own diminishment, by living a divided life, by failing to make that fundamental decision to act and speak on the outside in ways consonant with what we know to be true on the inside.

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.

The past isn't fixed and frozen in place. Instead, its meaning changes as life unfolds.

A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside of himself or herself ... lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

The highest form of love is the love that allows for intimacy without the annihilation of difference.

You don't become a good teacher by applying techniques; you don't become a good teacher by using the latest hot methodologies that are being promoted in this or that handbook.

What do I want to let go of and what do I want to give myself to?