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.

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...

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...

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.

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...

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

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...

When you are measuring life, you are not living it.

Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.

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.

But a desperate heart will seduce the mind.

But my father, a thief in many ways, had robbed me of my concentration.

When someone is in your heart, they’re never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times.

The story of my recent life.’ I like that phrase. It makes more sense than ‘the story of my life’, because we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a...

I love you every day. And now I will miss you every day.

Don’t fall asleep in classes. It’s such a lucky thing you have, to be taught and to be learning and not have to be working in a shop somewhere.

the only time we waste it the time we spend thinking we are alone.

Nobody’s favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody’s favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?

when all this started, I asked myself, ‘Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?’ I decided I am going to live-or at least try...

Time,” the Captain said, “is not what you think.” He sat down next to Eddie. “Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning.

When someone is in your heart, they’re never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times.

If we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love, and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching...

In the South American rainforest, there is a tribe called the Desana, who see the world as a fixed quantity of energy that flows between all creatures. Every birth must therefore engender a death, and...

Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish

And a man without memories is just a shell.

I believe the biggest themes of life are put into the best focus when held up against the very sharp light of mortality.

Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? … He could be research. A human textbook. ‘Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn...

Embrace aging.