Mounting an expedition to actualize a Compassionate Commonwealth of all peoples...is the great spiritual challenge of our time.

The traditional gender ideals of the strong-silent man who plays his cards close to his chest and the mysterious woman who disguises her feelings with coyness go so far as to make a virtue of being unavailable and secretive. But wholehearted intimacy can develop only where two people are equally forthcoming and self-revelatory. To take the risk of loving, we must become vulnerable enough to test the radical proposition that knowledge of another and self-revelation will ultimately increase rather than decrease love. It is an awe-ful risk.

Consensual paranoia - the pathology of the normal person who is a member of a war-justifying society - forms the template from which all the images of the enemy are created. By studying the logic of paranoia, we can see why certain archetypes of the enemy must necessarily recur, no matter what the historical circumstances.

In the degree that we remember and retell our stories and create new ones we become the authors, the authorities, of our own lives.

To sustain love, a man and a woman must continually be marrying and divorcing, moving with, against, away from, and beyond each other, saying 'yes' and 'no'.

Compassion begins with the acknowledgment of the single inescapable truth that is the foundation for the possibility of love between human beings - an awareness of the tragic sense of life.

Good men and good women have fire in the belly. We are fierce. Don't mess with us if you're looking for someone who will always be 'nice' to you. Nice gets you a C+ in life. We don't always smile, talk in a soft voice, or engage in indiscriminate hugs. In the loving struggle between the sexes we thrust and parry.