I'd confused need with love and love with sacrifice.

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

Like a starfish, the heart endures its amputation.

Old dogs can be a regal sight. Their exuberance settles over the years into a seasoned nobility, their routines become as locked into yours as the quietest and kindest of marriages.

Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.

What they never tell you about grief is that missing someone is the simple part.

memory is both the curse of grief and the eventual talisman against it; what at first seems unbearable becomes the succor that can outlast pain.

Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn't survive.

The real hell of this," he told her, "is that you're going to get through it.

the territory of grief ... is both cruel and commonplace.

That she was irreplaceable became a bittersweet loyalty: Her death was what I had now instead of her.

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

One sure way to excel in life, be fabulous and fantastic is to know your fears and deal with them with fierce.

A kind word is like a Spring day.

Patience is idling your motor when you feel like stripping a gear.

We should thank God for being with us, not ask Him to be with us (this is always given!).

A man must pay the fiddler. In my case it so happened that a whole symphony orchestra often had to be subsidized.

Just follow your heart and you'll see no one can love you as much as me.

Thinking instead of acting is the number one golf disease.

The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize.

There is much to learn about what could happen in the gardens of the future, should designers wish to learn about the past.