Everyone joins a band in this life. One way or another, the band breaks up.
First loves often remain in the heart, like plants that cannot grow in sunlight.
Have you ever known a man of faith? Did you run the other way? If so, stop running. Maybe sit for a minute. For a glass of ice water. For a plate of corn bread. You may find there is something beautiful to learn, and it doesn’t bite you and it doesn’t weaken you, it only proves a divine spark lies inside each of us, and that spark may one day save the world.
You humans are always locking each other away. Cells. Dungeons. Some of your earliest jails were sewers, where men sloshed in their own waste. No other creature has this arrogance – to confine its own. Could you imagine a bird imprisoning another bird? A horse jailing a horse?
Over time, I guess all your teachers find their way into your music, right?
I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don’t let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry.
Our culture doesn’t encourage you to think about such things until you’re about to die. We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks – we’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t get into the habbit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?
Once, when Giselle was alive, he thought about the future. Now he only thought about the past.
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops -Henry Adams.
When we build, we build on the shoulders of those who came before us. And when we fall apart, those who came before us help put us back together.
This is the disarming power of children: their need makes you forget your own.
You will never know all there is to know. You will learn until your final days. Then you will inspire someone else. This is what an artist does.
Amazing, I thought. I worked in the news business. I covered stories where people died. I interviewed grieving family members. I even attended the funerals. I never cried. Morrie, for the suffering of people half a world away, was weeping. Is this what comes at the end, I wondered? Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.
And while she didn’t know it then, she was learning another truth about love: it comes when it comes. Simple as that.
The second death. To think that you died and no one would remember you.
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 will love. If it’s right, Eddie, this can be such a wonderful moment.
And, as is usually the fate with bands, most of them will break up – through distance, differences, divorce, or death.
Lost love is still love, Eddie. It just takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t hold their hand... You can’t tousle their hair... But when those senses weaken another one comes to life... Memory... Memory becomes your partner. You hold it... you dance with it... Life has to end, Eddie... Love doesn’t.
Morrie went to his funeral. He came home depressed. “What a waste,” he said. “All those people saying all those wonderful things, and Irv never got to hear any of it.
Here is what I know of love. It changes the way you treat me. I feel it in your hands. Your fingers. Your compositions. The sudden rush of peppy phrases, major sevenths, melody lines that resolve neatly and sweetly, like a valentine tucked in an envelope. Humans grow dizzy from new affection, and young Frankie was already dizzy when he and the mysterious girl descended from that tree.