One of Mom's favorite passages from Gilead was: This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person...
It’s three hours, and I know I probably won’t feel up for it, but if I’m going to feel rotten, I’d rather feel rotten watching something wonderful than just sitting in the living room, looking at the...
In December 2008, I had the book with me while we waited for Dr. O'Reilly. Mom had already finished it. Every time I put the book down to go grab some mocha, or check my email, or make a call, I retur...
We’ve reached a point in American history when death has become almost the last obscenity. Have you noticed how many of us refuse to say ‘he or she died’? We’re far more likely to say ‘she passed away...
Kabat-Zinn writes, You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well the tools...
In Gilead, the narrator's friend's son describes himself not as an atheist but in state of categorical unbelief. He says, I don't even believe God doesn't exist, if you see what I mean. I pointed this...
Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, which had won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005,
Loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern world, so full of freedom, independence and our own egotistical selves.
It's not hard to read about death abstractly. I do find it tough when a character I love dies, of course. You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them.
It was a passage about a fifty-fifth high school reunion. It began: The list of our deceased classmates on the back of the program grows longer; the class beauties have gone to fat or bony-cronehood;...
I was learning that when you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.
I particularly like that last phrase, Mom said. About protecting your own happiness.
Two different kinds of Japanese psychotherapies, one based on getting people to stop using feelings as an excuse for their actions and the other based on getting people to practice gratitude.
There are certain books that I mean to read and keep stacked by my bedside. I even take them on trips. Some of my books should be awarded their own frequent-flier miles, they've traveled so much. I ta...
The world is complicated, she added. You don’t have to have one emotion at a time.
Reading and naps, two of life's greatest pleasures, go especially well together.
Kabat-Zinn writes, You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. OBAMA
I read to live. I read for life.
I gave people who didn’t know what to say the best advice I could muster, which was that it was better to say anything rather than pretend that nothing was wrong. My hunch was that Mom would simply ap...