Bruce Feiler Quotes

Happy families do have certain things in common. Today we finally have the knowledge to know what those things are.

I say the same thing that I've said for decades now, which is: don't go over to Japan trying to change it, thinking that you know better. Go there trying to understand.

We no longer just take religious identity from our parents, so what's going on? Why are people going to this series, why are people reading so many books about religion? It's because they want answers. The answers are no longer just passed down from generation to generation. It's harder for people. In effect, you have to roll up your sleeve and ask the questions. But if you do it, if you forge your own identity, it can be much more personal and much more meaningful to you.

I'm a fifth generation Jew from the South, and I would say that I felt this connection to my religion, but it wasn't a spiritual connection.

I'd say my best memory was climbing Mt. Fuji, and the worst memory was ... trying to fit my feet into the free giveaway slippers at Japanese schools.

Superman's original name was Kal-El, or Swift God. His father's name was Jor-El. Superman was clearly drawn as a modern-day god.

I was so naive about writing, I went to the public library and checked out the only volume they had on the topic - an academic treatise about publishing from the WWII era.

'Walking the Bible' describes the year that I spent retracing the five books of Moses through the desert, and I was actually working on a follow-up, which would look at the rest of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.

The key idea of agile is that teams essentially manage themselves ... It works in software, and it turns out that it works with kids.

You may be frustrated with religion, but don't take that out on God.

Everybody has heard that family dinner is great for kids. But unfortunately, it doesn't work in many of our lives.

I had always believed that I left a bit of me wherever I went. I also believed that I took a bit of every place with me. I never felt that more than with this trip. It was as if the act of touching these places, walking these roads,and asking these questions had added another column to my being. And the only possible explanation I could find for that feeling was that a spirit existed in many of the places I visited, and a spirit existed in me and the two had somehow met in the course of my travels. It's as if the godliness of the land and the godliness of my being had fused.

I definitely subscribe to the idea that 9/11, to use an overused phrase, was a wake-up call. There was a year-long national teach-in on Islam - everyone read books and suddenly talked about Islam, and that was very productive. But there's no doubt that moment has passed.

The way to tell a really big story, I think, is to tell a really small story.

Create a safe zone. Every parent quickly learns that every child - and every adult - handles conflict differently. Some push back when criticized, some turn inward, some break down in tears.

Children who plan their own schedules and evaluate their own work build up their brains and learn to take more responsibility.

The simplest consequence of walking on crutches is that you walk slower. Every step must be a necessary one. When you hurry, you get where you're going, but you get there alone. When you go slow, you get where you're going, but you get there with a community you've built along the way.

Moses is our true founding father.

I set out to write an anti-parenting parenting book.

After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: Develop a strong family narrative.

There is profundity to explore, but also laundry to do.

Fathers can find great inspiration in faith.

Cancer is a passport to intimacy. It is an invitation, maybe even a mandate, to enter the most vital arenas of human life, the most sensitive and the most frightening, the ones that we never want to go to - but when we do go there, we feel incredibly transformed.

The most successful families embrace and elevate their family history, particularly their failures, setbacks and other missteps.

Let your kids pick their punishments. Our instinct as parents is to order our kids around. It's easier, and we're usually right! But it rarely works.

In the end I believe the essential spirit that animates those places animates me. If that spirit is God, then I found God ... If that spirit is life, then I found life ... If that spirit is awe, then I found awe. Part of me suspects it's all three ... all I had to do to discover that spirit and the resulting feeling of humility and appreciation was not to look or listen or taste or feel. All I had to do was remember, for what I was looking for I somehow already knew.

Americans know more about religion than almost any other topic.

If you tell your own story to your children - that includes your positive moments and your negative moments, and how you overcame them - you give your children the skills and the confidence they need to feel like they can overcome some hardship that they've felt.

One question hovers over all of us who choose to spend our lives writing: why keep doing this in a world where so many forces are aligned against us?

When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence.

Tired of nagging your kids to hurry up, get dressed, drink their milk and brush their teeth? Here's a radical idea: Don't.

In his work as a management consultant, Covey often asked his corporate clients to write a one-sentence answer to the question What is this organization's essential mission or purpose and what is its main strategy to accomplish that?

Don't forget, God uses words to create the world. Words! Words are only hope.

It is our responsibility to find God in someone who is different from us. I think that God basically says, 'I created diversity on purpose, and it is your responsibility to figure out how to make it work.'

Our instinct as parents is to order our kids around - it's easier, and frankly, we're usually right. [But] reverse the waterfall as much as possible. Enlist the children in their own upbringing.

One of the core ideas of the Bible is that meaning can be found in history. The sheer act of telling and retelling stories helps us to understand God's role in the world as well as our own position in a long line of ancestors who have wrestled with similar issues to the ones we wrestle with every day.

May your first word be adventure and last word love.

Abraham is the shared ancestor of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He stands at the heart of these three faiths. And yet you know almost nothing about him.

There's a reason the Exodus story has inspired so many Americans. It's a narrative of hope.

Children who plan their own goals, set weekly schedules, evaluate their own work build up their frontal cortex and take more control over their lives.

All couples have been told to schedule regular one-on-one time. 'Date night' is the default answer to most problems in modern marriages. And research backs this up.

I think that most of the action in religion is around the home, is in families, and is in individual lives, and they can go on their own searches, watch their own TV shows, read their own books, form their own groups and discuss it, but that's where the action is - on the home front.

You don't need a grand plan, you don't need to go back to the ancestors and rewrite the rules. You just need to take small steps and accumulate small wins.

I was surprised how relevant the Moses story was to contemporary American debates - from our ongoing debate about values, to our role as champions of freedom, to our place as a country that welcome immigrants.

My name is Bruce Feiler, and I'm an explainaholic. I first heard this word used to describe Isaac Asimov, and I knew instantly that I suffered from the same condition. It's the incurable desire to tell, shape, share, occasionally exaggerate, often elongate, and inevitably bungle a good story.

If you always read books, you'll always be happy.

I grew up as a fifth-generation Jew in the American South, at the confluence of two great storytelling traditions. After graduating from Yale in the 1980s, I moved to Japan. For young adventure seekers like myself, the white-hot Japanese miracle held a similar appeal as Russia in 1920s or Paris in the 1950s.

The higher the joy is not the light, it's the reflection. The greater pleasure is not climbing up; it's handing down

Even Superman's name reflects his creators' biblical knowledge.

Nd you will have many opportunities to take in human civilization at its highest levels of achievement..approach this experience as a small child might approach a mud puddle. You can lean over and look at yourself in the reflection, maybe stick a finger in it, an cause a little ripple. Or you can dive in, thrash around, and find out what it feels like, what it tastes like ... I urge you to jump in. And I look forward to seeing you, back here, at the end of this experience, covered in mud.

The biblical story is in dialogue with the other stories of its time. And if the Bible can be in dialogue with other cultures, why can't the people who are descendants of the Bible be in dialogue with other cultures?