Loss doesn't feel redeemable. But for me one consoling aspect is the recognition that, in this at least, none of us is different from anyone else: We all lose loved ones; we all face our own death.

I think about my mother every day. But usually the thoughts are fleeting - she crosses my mind like a spring cardinal that flies past the edge of your eye: startling, luminous, lovely... gone.

One word I had throughout the first year and a half of my mother's death was 'unmoored.' I felt that I had no anchor, that I had no home in the world.

All love stories are tales of beginnings. When we talk about falling in love, we go to the beginning, to pinpoint the moment of freefall.

There is always tension in women's gymnastics between athleticism, grace, performance, and eros.

A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.

The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.

Grief is characterized much more by waves of feeling that lessen and reoccur, it's less like stages and more like different states of feeling.

It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain.

One of the things about grief is that it can bring a deeper perspective into your life; in the end, it has, for me, though it's also brought sorrow.

When my mother was sick, I found myself needing to put down in my journals all sorts of things - to try to understand them, and, I think, to try to remember them.

All men have One Master, the Maker.

Always be truthful. When you lie to others, you are really lying to yourself.

Trying to design the perfect plan is the perfect recipe for disappointment.

The market is going to love it. The market always seems to applaud major mergers, even though the vast majority of them don't work out and don't increase shareholder value.

Of course people think Washington is arrogant. It is.

I like the inspiration of the first take.

Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started.

People should be nice to you, Leonard. You're a human being. You should expect people to be nice.

What we call powers, secrets of nature, and force, are all within. In the external world are only a series of changes.

You have to remember that when you are a performer you become a celebrity, but you are not saving lives. It's not that important.