Dying is only one thing to be sad over... Living unhappily is something else.

For me, living means I can be responsive to the other person. It means I can show my emotions and my feelings. Talk to them. Feel with them.

All younger people should know something. If you’re always battling against getting older, you’re always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow.

When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions.

My contention is that as long as you have other faculties-the emotional, psychological, intuitive faculties-you haven't lost yourself or even diminished yourself. Don't be ashamed when you're physically limited or dysfunctional; don't think that you're any less because of your condition. In fact, I feel I am even more myself than I was before I got this illness because I have been able to transcend many of the psychological and emotional limitations I had before I developed ALS.

If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all.

The tension of opposites: Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.