“Religion is the great balm of existence because it takes us outside ourselves, connects us to something larger”

“I realized right away that books could take us out of ourselves, and make us larger. Even provide us with human connections we wouldn’t otherwise have.”

“We do not accept a religion because it offers us certain rewards. The only thing that a religion can offer us is to be just what it, in itself, is: a greater meaning in ourselves, in our lives, and in our grasp of the nature of things...a religion exists for us only if, like a piece of poetry, it carries us away. It is not in any sense a 'hypothesis.”

“This is the reason why our Theology is certain: because it seizes us from ourselves and places us outside ourselves.”

“Nothing existed outside ourselves and school. For us, the world of politics, social revolution, the war in Vietnam never happened.”

“We all search for our meaning, and if we do not find meaning in who we are or what we do, we often search outside ourselves for someone to tell us both, sometimes to the detriment of ourselves and the larger society...”