Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.