Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you’re young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids...

Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.

You can’t cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is “If you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim

In this world, it’s not enough to have a fine education. You need a piece of paper to prove you got it.

Those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness. Rich city folks, he’d say, lived in fancy apartments, but their...

Don’t you make fun of me or my children! Some babies are premature. Mine were all postmature. That’s why they’re so smart. Their brains had longer to develop.

One of the ways to discover our toughness and resiliency is to look back at where we come from. (from Amazon description)

One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would...

What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger

Dad was on the porch, pacing back and forth in that uneven stride he had on account of having a gimp leg. When he saw, he let out a yelp of delight and started hobbling...

As I sat down, though, I realized that you can get used to certain luxuries that you start to think they’re necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you...

No child is born a delinquent. They only became that way if nobody loved them when they were kids. Unloved children grow up to be serial murderers or alcoholics.

If you had weak eyes, they needed exercise to get strong. Glasses were like crutches. They prevented people with feeble eyes from seeing the world on their own.