“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.”

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.

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

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.

Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.

Caring can be learned by all human beings, can be worked into the design of every life, meeting an individual need as well as a pervasive need in society.

The critical question about regret is whether experience led to growth and new learning. Some people seem to keep on making the same mistakes, while others at least make new ones. Regret and remorse can be either paralyzing or inspiring.

Improvisation and new learning are not private processes; they are shared with others at every age. We are called to join in a dance whose steps must be learned along the way, so it is important to attend and respond. Even in uncertainty, we are responsible for our steps.

There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.

Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.

Often continuity is visible only in retrospect.