If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth: Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.

The French still offer Sartre and Derrida rather than Pascal.

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.

All of Japan once a year will get up on their rooftops, because that's the night that the shepherd boy from one side of the Milky Way gets to meet the weaver girl on the other side of the Milky Way. They all get up on their roofs and watch that night. So they long for 365 days and then on the 365th night, they see the result of that longing.

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.

The beginning of love is a horror of emptiness.

You say to yourself, Well, this poem isn't going to be any good, but I'll write it anyway.