I think, actually, that none of us understands anyone else very well, because we’re all too shy to show what matters the most. If you ask me, it’s a major design flaw. We ought to be able to say, Here, look what I am. I think it would be quite a relief.
When you take the small roads you see the life that goes on there, and this makes your own life larger.
You know before you know, of course. You are bending over the dryer, pulling out the still-warm sheets, and the knowledge walks up your backbone. You stare at the man you love and you are staring at nothing; he is gone before he is gone.
Come over here and light me a cigarette,” she’d said. I’d snuck a little inhale, and my mother had smiled. But then she’d said, “Don’t get started with something you won’t be able to do without.
For what reason would I lie to one I so love?
My mother lost too much and repaired herself in the only way she was able to repair herself. That in fact she is repairing herself, hour by hour.
Books educate and inspire, and they soothe souls – like comfort food without the calories.
This is the way things work sometimes, that good things get ideas from each other, say, well now let’s go ahead and let her have it all.
I’m sorry! It’s just that it hurts so much and it never stops!
We live but a short time, at the longest. How do we make our lives mean something? If we die in glory, with our minds and our hearts fixed on achieving a great goal, we have lived a life that mattered.
This is life, uh? We lose something here; we get something there. The trick is to stop looking in the old place to find the new thing.
Do you guys ever think about how Hitler has affected the whole world? That just one man did all this? I mean, what if he had been a good man, instead?
Books don’t take time away from us,” she said. “They give it back. In this age of abstraction, of multitasking, of speed for speed’s sake, they reintroduce us to the elegance – and the relief! – of real, tick-tock time.
I don’t think you’ve even begun to realize all there is for you to love. And I know you better than anyone, and here’s what I know about you: You have so much love to give! But I feel like you’re all the time digging in the tomato bin, saying ‘Where are the apples?
Don’t let your habits become handcuffs.
Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.
There is incredible value in being of service to others. I think if many of the people in therapy offices were dragged out to put their finger in a dike, take up their place in a working line, they would be relieved of terrible burdens.
I will come back as a little breeze. You will feel me on your face, and you will know that I am still listening. So you can still talk to me.
The truth is, aging can be your realest opportunity to decide how best to live – and the best incentive for getting you to do just that.
You feel the call. That’s the important thing. Now answer it as fully as you can. Take the risk to let all that is in you, out. Escape into the open.