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.

Everyone knows they re going to die,' he said again, 'but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.

My father moved through theys of we, singing each new leaf out of each tree, (and every child was sure that spring danced when she heard my father sing).

Death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.

When you're rotten about yourself, you become rotten to everyone else, even those you love.

Whenever you have two characters in a book, whether it's a novel or nonfiction, you run the risk that the reader is going to like one more than the other. They're going to read one chapter and say, 'I can't wait to get back to the other guy.

It’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also 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. I always wished I had done more with my work; I wished I had written more books. I used to beat myself up over it. Now I see that never did any good. Make peace. You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you.