But there’s a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all...

If you are fully alive to the prospect of dying, you really start reprioritising your life.

Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else.

Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.

Going back to something is harder than you think.

But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love...

I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that...

The truth is, there is no line. There’s only your life, how you mess it up, and who is there to save you.Or who isn’t.

Now that child reminds me of something our sages taught. When a baby comes into the world, it’s hands are clenched, right? Like this?”He made a fist.”Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants...

Detroit is a place where we’ve had it pretty tough. But there is a generosity here and a well of kindness that goes deep.

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them – a mother’s approval, a father’s nod – are...

Holding anger is a poison…It eats you from inside…We think that by hating someone we hurt them…But hatred is a curved blade…and the harm we do to others…we also do to ourselves.

You need someone to probe you in that direction. It won’t just happen automatically.” I knew what he was saying. We all need teachers in our lives.

Sacrfice,” the captain said. “You made one. I made one. We all made them. But you were angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost. You didn’t get it. Sacrifice is a part...

I took my orders, too. But if i couldn’t keep you alive, I thought I could at least keep you together. In the middle of a big war, you go looking for a small idea...

Never tell a child that something it’s too hard

How do you let go of anger? How do you release a fury you’ve been standing on for so long, you would stumble were it yanked away?

Whenever you have two characters in a book, whether it’s a novel or nonfiction, you run the risk that the reader is going to like one more than the other. They’re going to read one...

And the Winner Is,

But then, I knew so little about my mother over the last decade of her life. I had been too wrapped up in my own drama.

Without love we all like birds with broken wings.

You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.

The eighties happened. The nineties happened. Death and sickness and getting fat and going bald happened. i traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realized i was doing it. (page...

If you accept that you can die at any time – then you might not be as ambitious as you are

I used to be a classic workaholic, and after seeing how little work and career really mean when you reach the end of your life, I put a new emphasis on things I believe count...

Love each other or die.

As usual, he saves his wife’s for last. He leans on the cane and he looks at the headstone and he thinks about many things. Taffy. He thinks about taffy. He thinks it would take...

A wind blew, and the sand around his drawing scattered. He wrapped his fingers inside his wife’s, and Father Time rekindled a connection he had only ever had with her. He surrendered to that sensation...

You can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.

There is no experience like having children.’ That’s all. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the experience of...

It’s not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we made.

You have peace,” the old woman said, “when you make it with yourself.

And is often the case with faith, I thought I was being asked a favor, when in fact I was being given one”.

You have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it.

People come down for baseball or football or hockey and drive by the refurbished Fox and State theaters, they see the new Hard Rock Cafe, the Borders bookstore, the bars and restaurants, the loft conversions....

You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven’t found meaning . Because if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You...

Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those...

People often belittle the place where they were born but heaven can be found in the most unlikely places.

You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship

You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.

However, this is too harmonious, grand, and overwhelming a universe to believe it all on accident.

People are only mean when they’re threatened, and that’s what our culture does. That’s what our economy does.

Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is aweapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. Andthe harms we do, we do...

If you hold back on the emotions–if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them–you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re...

Kids chase the love that eludes them.

There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things” -he sighed- “these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? Morrie Schwartz

Mitch,if you’re trying to show off for people at the top,forget it.They will look down at you anyhow.And if you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom,forget it.They will only envy you.Status will...

The bride waits here,” she said, running her hands along her hair, taking in her image but seeming to drift away. “This is the moment you think about what you’re doing. Who you’re choosing. Who...

You’re not a wave, you’re a part of the ocean.

If you really could fit God in a file, you wouldn’t need to believe in God, you know, you’d just go get the file like a box of corn flakes off the shelf.