“Gangs have always existed—they are primarily a community a young men trying to find intensity, meaning, a path to the outer world (outside of home) that most tribal groupings addressed with rituals, rites of passage, initiation ceremonies. We’ve lost this knowledge as a culture. Gangs also exist when there are lots of empties in a person, in family, in community. It points out how we need to do more to bring real art, passions, teachings, caring, and resources into the emptiness of young peoples’ lives…”

“In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and rudimentary communication.”

“The reality is people (in Melbourne) are scared to go out at restaurants of a night time because they’re followed home by these gangs, home invasions, and cars are stolen and we just need to call it for what it is. Of course, it is African gang violence.”

“Young Asian males are nine times as likely as white youth to belong to a gang and Hispanic youth are 19 times more likely. A disproportionate share of Hispanic young and poor are thus assimilating into a misogynistic, rebellious, youth sub-culture of drugs, gangs, crime, contempt for formal education, and hostility to police.”

“They are as empty without a young as we are empty without them”

“The world needs this renewal! In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading interior emptiness, unnamed fears, a quiet sense of despair. How many of our contemporaries have built broken and empty cisterns in a desperate search for meaning - the ultimate meaning that only love can give?…. The Church also needs this renewal! She needs your faith, your idealism and your generosity, so that she can always be young in the Spirit!”

“There is no meaning to space that is independent of the relationships among real things of the world. …Space is nothing apart from the things that exist. …If we take out all the words we are not left with an empty sentence, we are left with nothing.”

“Art is the most effective mode of communications that exists.”

“It is important to teach our young about who they are and how culture can empower them to help the greater community. It is very difficult, especially in the age of technology to curb what mass-media and marketing try to tell us who we are, and even more difficult when those closest to you act uninterested. It is an uphill climb, sometimes alone, to find the truth.”

“In the end, young people are at risk of being disinherited from their community if that community lacks the courage and confidence to teach its history.”