In the society that has replaced the paternalistic society, women are able to develop their independent and social energies much more. That is good.

The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years. "I am a victim," he says, over and over; and he is. But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions. Most American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses. And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors would look like, or feel like.

The ancestors are very much invested in the children, because the children are the ones who are going to continue the world that the ancestors made.

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.

Hierarchy, as in the Catholic Church, has to do with power, and vertical attention has to do with longing.

I have spent many years trying to recover a common language, one that can cross the distance between people.

We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.