“When parents die, all of the partings of the past are reevoked with the realization that this time they will not return.”

Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.

Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.

Learning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with patterns, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity.

Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.

We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.

Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.

Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.

The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.

Monotony and repetition are characteristic of many parts of life, but these do not become sources of conscious discomfort until novelty and entertainment are built up as positive experiences.

Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.

The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.

The past empowers the present, and the sweeping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future.

What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.

A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.

In many ways, constancy is an illusion.

The Christian tradition was passed on to me as a great rich mixture, a bouillabaisse of human imagination and wonder brewed from the richness of individual lives.

If you’re feeling stressed or anxious and you don’t know why, ask yourself: What little thing led me here? Recently, I canceled on a friend because I was tired. I went to bed feeling stressed out, and I realized, I feel bad because I canceled.

Once I realized that the only thing I can actually control in this life is my own mind, how I choose to react, feel, and perceive, I felt immediately liberated.

We never completely comprehend ourselves, but we can do far more than comprehend.

It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.

I realized, the older I get, the more difficult life becomes. It’s not easier, it’s more difficult.

We can all be conned but at what point do we realize that we’re being conned and to what point do we allow ourselves to be conned?

Once you realize something, then you can’t pretend you don’t know it any more.

I think there comes a time when you realize that you need God in your life, God’s Word, and the spiritual guidance that only He can give.