"He complimented me on how brilliant my diagnoses were: "You can smell a delusion, you can ferret out a hallucination, but"—and this has always stuck in my mind—"did you know that this woman grew prize camellias? Did you know that this man played the piano?" "No," I replied, a little bemused, "I wasn't trained to find the good things." But from then on I started to, and ever since I have looked for the good things. What the patient can do, not what he can't. His deficiencies and his weaknesses are so obvious, but his strengths, tragically, are deeply hidden: that is what makes him a patient, a sufferer. For it is his strength alone that will alleviate his suffering."

“Our first appreciation of music comes through the sounds of the mother, especially her voice and her lullaby. Our earliest musical expression, of which speech is a part, is in a sense a duet with her. And later in life we should still be able to discern the voice of love in the music.”

“Through my mother's disease I came to know her as Spirit. The name of her disease hardly matters—no more than the name of the disease of your loved one. What matters is seeing through the disease to the sufferer's very essence, to their Soul.”

“Holistic does not mean doing all things, but bringing all of yourself to all of the sufferer, and him bringing all of himself to you.”

“The most basic and primitive emotion is love in its various manifestations. This has been neglected in medicine, neglected in psychiatry, and neglected in our society. We don't read in the newspapers about love. We don't read in the medical textbooks about love. We don't read in the psychiatric textbooks above love, except to study it in a pathological way. We must realize that love can activate our life energy and promote healing. This is a matter of vital medical importance. Medicine today pays little if any regard to love and its power to heal. Perhaps what is needed more than anything else is to put love back into medicine.”

“Why does the drum, of all instruments, have the greatest potential for life enhancement? I don't really know but here are some thoughts. First of all, there are no notes, therefore fewer judgments to be made by yourself and by others. There will be less right and wrong—especially if there is no counting. Is it the vibrating membrane? So alive! Is it because of its roundness? What I do know, is that everyone's association with the drum is with Life, with Heart—even more with the Mother.”

“Taking a photograph is, it seems to me, a momentary revelation of an instance of the universal unity. The subject and I are one.”