“But nobody is visually naive any longer. We are cluttered with images, and only abstract art can bring us to the threshold of the divine.”

“God waits for us to create him.”

“We live in dramatic times. Violent confrontations are erupting in all parts of the world. Instinctively we feel that it does not have to be so. That confrontation could give way to cooperation.”

“In a world filled with mistrust, armed to the teeth and ready to explode, a realistic attitude might be to consider love as an imperative need.”

“To the black man, the white man looks and smells like a corpse. To the white man, the black man has the color and odor of shit. Their mutual hatred is based on a reciprocal recognition: the white man hates the black man for exposing that masked and hidden part of himself. The black man hates the white man's need to pull himself up from the earth. The black man sees in the white man's need the blind arrogance of one who thinks himself immortal. But he who brings civilization cannot help but feel immortal. This is why he smells like a corpse: he is constituted by the return of the repressed "remnant of earth," which clings to him as much as to any man.”

“Just then, a singly firefly flashes its light, then another. Within a minute the darkness is filled with fireflies, twinkling their silent melody. I think about all the people in the world, how each of us has a place where we belong. I wonder then what my place looks like. Because I am not there, and I am not sure I have ever seen it.”

“This little pile of shit, heaped here before my door, is mine, and I challenge any to malign its form. This little heap is my thing, my badge, a tangible sign of that which distinguishes me from, or likens me to, my neighbor. It is also what distinguishes him from me. His heap will never be mine. Whether he be friend or foe, this alone will allow me to recognize if we are alike: neat, clean, negligent, disgusting, or obviously rotten.”