Gangs are born of a lethal absence of hope, and hope has an address: 130 W. Bruno St. in Los Angeles, CA 90012.

Metro police can't infuse hope into those for whom hope is foreign. The algorithm does not exist that can heal the traumatized. Data-driven predictions won't result in the delivery of mental health services.

The arms of God reach to embrace, and somehow you feel yourself just outside God's fingertips.

I kinda don't do guilt. I gave it up for Lent years ago.

Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez - these are people whose thoughts are so important.

I know now that gang warfare is not the Middle East or Northern Ireland. There is violence in gang violence, but there is no conflict. It is not 'about something.' It is the language of the despondent and traumatized.

We are less than honest and commit a grave error if we insist that what happened to Rodney G. King was isolated and an exceptional case. The poor know better.

I've never met an evil person ever.

I'm not always optimistic, but I am hopeful.

I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen.

I want to be prophetic and take stands and stand with those on the margins, and I want to laugh as much as I can.

At its best, an injunction creates a kind of vigilant heat that moves kids toward the light.

God seems to be an unwilling participant in our efforts to pigeonhole Him.

Relapse happens, especially when you're dealing with folks who are frankly the least likely to succeed based on their own pasts and difficulties. We can work with the most likely to succeed. I'm not interested in that.

When the vastness of God meets the restriction of our own humanity, words can't hold it. The best we can do is find the moments that rhyme with this expansive heart of God.

Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.

We need the disruption of categories that lead us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far.

Our best selves tell us that 'there but for the grace of God... ' and that, in the end, there is no distance, really, between us and them. It is just us. Our best and noble hope is to imitate the God we believe in. The God who has abundant room in God's grief and heart for us all.

Redemption is possible, and it is the measure of a civilized society.

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

Does God feel like that same-sex marriage could happen? I don't think anybody who has a connection to God and God's understanding and depth of compassion who's gonna say 'no.'

I think that any program that's born from below rather than on high is going to survive.

The mark of our society as civilized will come when we embrace confidence in the power of redemption.

I work with gang members, and I feel a kind of affinity and gift, even. But who would've thunk it, you know? I mean, I didn't anticipate it.