“...I regard cats as one of the great joys in the world. I see them as a gift of highest order.”

“What people regard as vanity—leaving great works, having children, acting in such a way as to prevent one's name from being forgotten—I regard as the highest expression of human dignity.”

“Talking of politics, I would like to reiterate that Arabs are people. By that I mean they are not merely an anonymous mass of peasants with nothing worth fighting for, as the Western world sees them. On the contrary, they are people with great traditions and the highest values, for all our reluctance to assess them impartially.”

“And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? "Safe sex of the highest order.”

“It is one of the gifts of great spiritual teachers to make things simple. It is one of the gifts of their followers to complicate them again. Often we need to scrape away the accumulated complications of a master’s message in order to hear the kernel of what they said. (24)”

“There are souls in this world who have the gift of finding joy everywhere, and leaving it behind them when they go.”