“We always find it difficult to forgive our heroes for being human.”

“It is very difficult to be a hero without an audience, although, in a sense, we are each the hero of a peculiar, half-ruined film called our life.”

“But I find it difficult to recognize people. Human beings are so much alike.”

“Isn't it also that on some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are? We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals.”

“We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.”

“But understand that the reason it is so difficult to extend forgiveness to those who have failed us is because we are unable to receive forgiveness for our own failures.”