“Fear destroys intimacy. It distances us from each other; or makes us cling to each other, which is the death of freedom.... Only love can create intimacy, and freedom too, for when all hearts are one, nothing else has to be one--neither clothes nor age; neither sex nor sexual preference; race nor mind-set.”

“As all of us who strive to be good parents know, love is self-restricting when it comes to power.... Likewise God has left his servants freedom of choice.”

“Love is to make us more human, and that demands that we care so much for each other that we have not to be nice but to be honest. We have to be honest, for most real faults are hidden and therefore demand an outside revealer.”

“And if we exalt freedom as Christians, we must remember that freedom is grounded in love.”

“As for loneliness, it too has deep roots in selfishness, for its anguish stems less from having no one with whom to share one's burdens, more from having only one's burdens to share.”

“Too many religious people make faith their aim. They think 'the greatest of these' is faith, and faith defined as all but infallible doctrine. These are the dogmatic, divisive Christians, more concerned with freezing the doctrine than warming the heart. If faith can be exclusive, love can only be inclusive.”

“Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart's full of hope, you can be persistent when you can't be optimistic. You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. So while I'm not optimistic, I'm always very hopeful.”