As I left Calcutta, it occurred to me that I was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness. Could we learn to feel again?

in one moment, God feels the pain of the victims of unspeakable violence, and God feels the agonizing pain of seeing a beloved child executed at the hands of the state.

And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.

We all need a place where we can give voice to the worst that torments our souls and still be held.

For a long time, our only mode of travel was an Econoline van. Eleven of us, with nine sleeping in the back on two mattresses.

Adversity not only draws people together, but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship.

He knew, for the moment, that he felt affection for Roark; an affection that held pain, astonishment and helplessness.

People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been—for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.

He could not condemn them without understanding; and he could not understand. Did he like them? No, he thought; he had wanted to like them, which was not the same. He had wanted it in the name of some unstated potentiality which he had once expected to see in any human being. He felt nothing for them now, nothing but the merciless zero of indifference, not even the regret of a loss.

Each of us deserves the freedom to pursue our own version of happiness. No one deserves to be bullied.

The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.

He's basically a good man. But he doesn't know me. Any more than he knew that girl that looked after your mother. He can't know me, not the way I know him. Maybe some of these Hawaiians can, or the Indians on the reservation. They've seen their fathers humiliated. Their mothers desecrated. But your grandfather will never know what that feels like.