“Humans are a part of creation and shamanism is our way of connecting with the whole.”

“According to Eliade, the shamanic ladder is the earliest version of the idea of an axis of the world, which connects the different levels of the cosmos, and is found in numerous creation myths in the form of a tree.”

“The parts of the universe . . . all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole.”

“Humanity is the higher meaning of our planet, the nerve that connects this part of it with the upper world, the eye it raises to heaven. ”

“A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved.”

“I realize now that no simple, single-factor theory of depression will ever work. Depression is partly in our genes, partly in our childhood experience, partly in our way of thinking, partly in our brains, partly in our ways of handling emotions. It affects our whole being.”