From "Remembering Mr. Rogers", video interviews by Charlie Rose in 1994 and 1997, comments by Fred Rogers about emptiness and awareness and receiving:

• "What is essential is invisible to the eye. What we see is rarely what's essential. What's behind your face is what's essential."
• (Responding to the question, "What can't we see about you?") — "You can't see my spiritual life, unless you ask me about it. You don't see my family life, unless you ask me about it. The things that are center stage are rarely the things that are most important. It's usually what happens over in the wings, it's what happens out in the hall ... rather than when you're in the spotlight."
• (Responding to, "What did you learn from the kids?") — "Practically everything. How to know that it's all right to say what comes to your mind right away."
• "I get up every morning, at least by 5, have a couple hours of quiet time, reflect about what it is that is important, before i go swimming and then the business of the day."
• "What can we do to encourage people to have more quiet in their lives? More silence? Real revelation comes through silence."
• "People who are not the fancy people in this world are the ones who seem to nourish my soul. I want to learn how to be the best receiver that I can ever be, because I think graceful receiving is one of the most wonderful gifts we can give anybody. If we receive what somebody gives us in a graceful way, we've given that person a wonderful gift."
• (re what his latest book is about) "It's about being. It's about the things that matter to me. It's about the white spaces between the paragraphs, which I think are more important than any of the text, because it allows you to think about what you've just read."
• (re people who have made a difference in his life) — "A lot of people ... have allowed me to have some silence. I don't think we give that gift very much any more. I'm very concerned that our society is much more interested in Information than Wonder, in Noise rather than Silence. ... How do we encourage reflection? ... Oh, my, this is a noisy world!"

(cf [1] and [2], 2018-09-10 - Thank You, Mr Rogers, Mr Rogers Asks (2019-11-18), Present in Every Moment (2019-11-25), 143 (2019-11-28), Receiving (2019-12-22), Just Tending Soil (2020-01-01), Listening (2020-01-17), ...) - ^z - 2020-03-30