It is essential not only to the souls of painters and poets, who thrive in solitude, but to the rest of us, too--individuals whose canvas is our lives.

A culture that values only what has succeeded before, where the first rule of success is that there must be something 'measured' and counted, is not a culture that will sustain alternatives to market-driven 'creativity.

Though we are made of memories, we live only in the here and now.

Trust, which is a virtue, is also a habit, like prayer. It requires exercise. And just as no one can run five miles a day and cede the cardiovascular effects to someone else, no one can trust for us.

Trusting each other is the beginning of a certain secular faith, a faith that allows us to live in families and communities and nations. Democracy, above all other forms of government, requires this faith.

It is essential not only to the souls of painters and poets, who thrive in solitude, but to the rest of us, too--individuals whose canvas is our lives.

Passion kept one fully in the present, so that time became a series of mutually exclusive 'nows.'