Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people and mention how important it is that compassion is the key that it's the sine-qua-non of religion people look kind of balked and stubborn sometimes as much to say what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?

I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book. But the reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego their identity.

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

Whether one believes in a religion or not and whether one believes in rebirth or not there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.

I feel an intense intimacy with those who have this loathing interest in me. Further than this I know what they mean I sympathize with them I understand them. There should be a name (as poetic as love) for this relationship between loather and loathed it is of the closest and more full of passion than incest.

My relationship with the journalists who covered the campaign was complicated. I often hid from the critical eye of their cameras and their omnipresent digital recorders wary of the critique implicit in every captured moment. But I also grew to respect and understand their passion for their work their love for the journey we were sharing.

This is the point being missed by readers who lament Liquor's lack of hot sex scenes probably because they aren't old enough to understand that a passionate relationship could be about anything other than sex.

Favored Nations is a long-term commitment. Our hope is that those who are passionate about real musicianship will want to hear and own most of our albums. We will set out to attain the same direct relationship with our customers that we have with our artists.

Writing is my obsession my passion. My relationship with it is one of the most complex and agonizing and richly vexing that I have in my life.