"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it... Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
"There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what that means, simply take yourself - in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love - and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it."
"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?"
"Don’t ever think I fell for you or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love; I rose in it."
"Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
"The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor…Jesus never commanded me to love my religion."
"Absence is a house so vast
that inside you will pass through its walls
and hang pictures on the air"
"I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary."