“Negotiating small differences is part of being a grownup; no one can tell you in advance where to put your foot down.”

“[...] God's message is that we are largely on our own. We are the ones who give moral guidelines body and life. You can take, if you will, your solace in heaven, but you must work out your ethics on earth.”

“What the Enlightenment rejected in the South Sea islands was what it perceived as a stupor, the docile submission to whatever bit of the given is coming your way. And what's coming your way is unlikely to be a breeze or a cow or a coconut, but a new kind of screen you can zap or click to create the illusion that life isn't passing you by.”

“Home is the normal--whatever place you happen to start from and return to without having to answer questions. It's a metaphor that may seem to fit reduced expectations. We no longer seek towers that would reach to the heavens; we've abandoned attempts to prove that we live in a chain of being whose every link bears witness to the glory of God. We merely seek assurance that we find ourselves in a place where we know our way about.”

“Human attempts to construct moral order are always precarious: If righteousness too often leads to self-righteousness, the demand for justice can lead to one guillotine or another.”

“As long as your ideas of what's possible are limited by what's actual, no other idea has a chance.”

“One great function of the arts is to keep ideals alive in a culture that does not yet realize them.”