"I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions."

"Compassion is a practically acquired knowledge, like dancing. You must do it and practice diligently day by day."

"Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings."

"We have domesticated God's transcendence. We often learn about God at about the same time as we are learning about Santa Claus but our ideas about Santa Claus change, mature and become more nuanced, whereas our ideas of God can remain at a rather infantile level."

"It is a radiant truth that beauty in art is the harmony of spirit, intellect, and craft — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"I never called my work an 'art'. It's part of show business, the business of building entertainment."

"Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse."

"Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance."