To want to understand is an attempt to recapture something we have lost.

Confronted with people who have power, and who enjoy using it, I turn into a different person, a baser and meaner one.

I have sat in the dark and looked at them both, the child and the woman. And the feeling has become too much. It is not sorrow or joy; it is the weight and the pressure of having been brought into their lives, and of knowing that if one were ever to be separated from them, it would mean your obliteration.

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language. At some point understanding may come. It will always be wordless. The moment you grasp what is foreign, you will lose the urge to explain it. To explain a phenomenon is to distance yourself from it.

If you want to support others you have to stay upright yourself.

The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.

When you're young, you think that sex is the culmination of intimacy. Later you discover that it's barely the beginning.