I believe the biggest themes of life are put into the best focus when held up against the very sharp light of mortality.

But they wanted you. Time is not something you give back. The very next moment may be answer to your prayer. To deny that is to deny the most important part of the future.

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

In college, I had a course in Latin, and one day the word "divorce" came up. I always figured it came from some root that meant "divide." In truth, it comes from "divertere," which means "to divert." I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else.

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

When we are most alone is when we embrace another's loneliness.

First and foremost, I would put a massive national emphasis on illiteracy with real markers that you could measure and real efforts to do a one-on-one kind of tutoring until kids can get up to snuff on that.