A person who discreetly farts in an elevator is not a divine being, and a man needs to know this.

Transcendence or detachment, leaving the body, pure love, lack of jealousy-that's the vision we are given in our culture, generally, when we think of the highest thing. . . . Another way to look at it is that the aim of the person is not to be detached, but to be more attached-to be attached to working; to be attached to making chairs or something that helps everyone; to be attached to beauty; to be attached to music.

What you feel in Japanese poetry is always entirely longing.

The distance between the adolescent and the true adult is about five thousand miles, but the distance between the adult and the elder is almost as large.

I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness.

The Roman Catholic Church early on simply adapted the hierarchical structure of the Roman Empire and confused the whole thing. Vertical attention and hierarchy were so entangled, that when the French killed the king during the Revolution, they lost much of their vertical attention too.

When an elder turns to face the dead, that means he turns away from facing the future and his own retirement in Phoenix, let's say. He turns and finds himself facing the children.