I thought about all the people I knew who spent many of their waking hours feeling sorry for themselves. How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day.
I believe that you live on inside the hearts and minds of everyone you’ve touched while you were here on earth.
Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We’re teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it. Create your own. Most people can’t do it.
Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.
Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.
I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you’ll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn’t.
We all lose somebody we care about and want to find some comforting way of dealing with it, something that will give us a little closure, a little peace.
Love wins, love always wins.
Going back to something is harder than you think.
You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship.
It’s not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we made.
We need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done. You can’t get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened.
Don’t let our outside labels or how fervent we look or zealous we are or how righteous we seem; that’s not how you measure yourself against other people. Everyone is a child of God; if we really believed that, we’d treat each other better.
Miracles happen quietly every day – in an operating room, on a stormy sea, in the sudden appearance of a road side stranger. They are rarely tallied. No one keeps score.
We all know how to be a child. It’s inside all of us. For me, it’s just remembering how to enjoy it.
I love you every day, Mom.
Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that’s all.
All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped.
Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.
Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.