“We are always alone. We are never alone. Even in the center of a crowd of friends , we cannot escape our apartness; even in the locked and darkened room, we cannot cut ourselves off from our sense of the life going on outside.”

“However self-sufficient we may fancy ourselves, we exist only in relation -- to our friend, family, and life partners; to those we teach and mentor; to our co-workers, neighbors, strangers; and even to forces we cannot fully conceive of, let alone define. In many ways, we are our relationships.”

“You have always been alone, always self-centered and fearful of opening yourself to other persons, for to do so is to risk rejection and pain. But it is a risk we are born to take, we humans. We cannot live alone, cannot find happiness or peace alone, cannot love alone. The person alone must always be fleeing, always searching. He flees from the loneliness without end. He searches, whether he will or not, for another who will fill his emptiness.”

“As we go about living from day to day, it is almost inevitable that our faith will be challenged. We may at times find ourselves surrounded by others and yet standing in the minority or even standing alone concerning what is acceptable and what is not. Do we have the moral courage to stand firm for our beliefs, even if by so doing we must stand alone?”

“There are never words for the strongest of our feelings. There is just the pain that we cannot share. Pain we must all feel alone.”

“The objective level is not words, and cannot be reached by words alone. We must point our finger and be silent, or we will never reach this level.”