Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.

The Church is in the world, it is part of the suffering in the world, and though Christ condemned the disciple who struck off the ear of the high priest's servant, our hearts go out in sympathy to all who are moved to violence by the suffering of others. The Church condemns violence, but it condemns indifference more harshly. Violence can be the expression of love, indifference never. One is an imperfection of charity, the other the perfection of egoism.

he forgot for the while what experience had taught him-that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness.

You think you are so bad,' she said, 'but it was only because you couldn't bear the pain. But they can bear pain - other people's pain - endlessly. They are the people who don't care.

If I could suffer like you, I could heal like you.

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

As Christians, we worship a victimized Lord. We should expect to suffer and should have particular compassion on those who hurt emotionally and physically. But we do not resemble the Suffering Servant when we take pains to show off our suffering.

I have occasionally - if ever I do interviews that are difficult or nerve-wracking - I take my wife's dog tags and have them in my pocket because it's a very quick way to realize that what I'm doing is not that important. It's not really worth getting stressed about because it's not, you know, war.

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

I feel like if you sit down and have an assistant engineer and a producer in a top-notch studio and everyone sets up all the mikes perfect, all of a sudden it's really hard to live that melancholy song. It's hard to really live it in the moment.

When we did so poorly at helping folks recover from drug addiction, we stepped back and said, "Duh, no wonder. None of us are heroine addicts.

The tears we shed are not just for ourselves but for our world.