“Surely some of you have felt the same way that I do. You have turned sullenly from those thousands of glowing, perfect teeth lighting the American landscape and slouched to the darkness—the half-lighted room, the twilight forest, the empty café. There you have sat and settled into the bare, hard fact that the world is terrible in its beauty, indifferent much of the time, incoherent and nervous and resplendent when on certain evenings, when the clouds are right, a furious owl swooshes luridly from the horizon. You feel that sweet pressure behind your eyes, as if you would at any minute explode into hot tears. You long to languish in this unnamed sadness, this vague sense that everything is precious because it is dying, because you can never hold it, because it exists for only an instant.”

“Do not perceive through overly judgmental eyes, prone to damnation. If you do, you are constrained to witness nothing but your notion of perfection, either fulfilled or violated. Gaze at life rather as though you were always blessing it, consecrating it, humbly, as holy, and then your biases will be relaxed and your curiosity will be aroused and surprise; there, in your peripheral, a glimmer after which you go, and it is gone, but its absence gleams.”

“Caves and darkness can't hold you when you die, they can only hold your bones.”

“When the beauty and gifts come into your life, if your not conscious of your pain you won't allow them in. If you are conscious you will begin to grieve the feelings of unworthiness, sadness, powerlessness internalized anger and negative messages you have soaked in. As these feelings and messages dissolve you will "wake up" from the dream they have created”

“You think because you face situations not of your making that you exercise no choice? That you are helpless? To the contrary, child. Your whole life has been full of choices. Hiding from a hard truth is a choice. Surrender - even to the inevitable - is a choice. Even in death there is a choice. You may have no control over the time or manner of your death, but you can choose how you face it.”

“What did you do with your life? It seemed to be a question about values, not facts: What did you accomplish with the precious time you were allotted? How much have you loved with your life? Have you loved others as I am loving you? Totally? Unconditionally? I have shown you by the life I lived. I showed you by the death I died. And if you keep your eyes on Me, you will see more....”

“I have had much experience with the unclean and uncivilized in the recent past. Shall I tell you what I discovered? I am not the state of my feet. I am not the dirt on my hands or the hygiene of my private parts. If I were these things, I would not have been at liberty to pray at any time since my arrest. But I did pray, because I am not these things. In the end, I am not even myself. I am a string of bones speaking the word God.”