Great joys make us love the world. Great sadnesses make us understand the world.

Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance, and none can say while some fields will blossom and others lay brown beneath the August sun. Care for those around you. Look past your differences. Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices in life no more easily made. And give. Give in any way you can, of whatever you possess. To give is to love. To withhold is to wither. Care less for your harvest than how is shared, and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.

It is much easier to become a father than to be one.

When you are here, you are here. When you are gone, you are gone. It isn't a problem to be gone, so long as you are really here when you're here.

My fatherhood made me understand my parents and to honor them more for the love they gave. My sonhood was revealed to me in its own perfection and I understood the reason the Chinese so value filiality, the responsibility of the son to honor the parents.

Life is an endlessly creative experience, and we are shaping ourselves at every moment by every decision we make.

Forgiveness allows us to live in the sunlight of the present, not the darkness of the past. Forgiveness alone, of all our human actions, opens up the world to the miracle of infinite possibility.