When we die, these are the stories still on our lips. The stories we’ll only tell strangers, someplace private in the padded cell of midnight. These important stories, we rehearse them for years in our head but never tell. These stories are ghosts, bringing people back from the dead. Just for a moment. For a visit. Every story is a ghost.

We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.

Listen up. Rant would tell people: ‘You’re a different human being to everybody you meet.’ Sometimes Rant said, ‘You only ever is in the eyes of other folks.’ If you were going to carve a quote on his grave, his favorite saying was: ‘The future you have tomorrow won’t be the same future you had yesterday.

Not everything is about money. You didn't even say, hello. You are not your sad little wallet.

More and more we are taught something throughout our growing up, our education, and continuously, no matter how much we believe in this thing, something comes up that forces us to revise our entire belief system. No matter whom you idolize, it turns out that Louis Armstrong collected vast amounts of pornography.

If you ask me, most people have children just as their own enthusiasm about life begins to wane.

More and more people are defining themselves not by what they are about, but by what they are against, what they are overcoming, the thing that is wrong with them.