I flipped open to read the marked passage in Daily Strength: 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 t...
And reading all different kinds of books is not simply reading all different kinds of books; it’s a way of becoming more fully human and more humane.
Pass the time? said the Queen. Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, Sir Kevin, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wante...
How does a doctor tell you that it’s over, that there are things they could do but probably shouldn’t, and that if your aim is quality of life and not quantity of life, there simply are no good next t...
Freedom can still depend on ink, just as it always has.
Books have played a role in almost every one of the world's great civil and human rights movements, but only because people who read them decided to act. Reading brings with it responsibility.
A 'C' means you've done average work. There's nothing shameful about being average. You didn't fail. You didn't even come close. You did what you were supposed to do. Cheerfully accepting the C means...
Life depends on what she thinks of as ‘big bursts’ and ‘little bursts.’ Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen cu...
At about page twenty or so, the magical thing occurred that happens only with the very best books: I became absorbed and obsessed and entered the Can’t you see I’m reading? mode.
When we denigrate mediocrity, we discourage ourselves and others from trying new things. It would be great to be a great painter, but it's also great just to paint. Or sing or throw pots or knit scarv...
The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith
That’s one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don’t want to talk about ourselves. Mom
Reading isn't the opposite of doing, it's the opposite of dying
Mom was often asked to give speeches about why she felt so committed to the cause of refugees. She would say, Just imagine that you are awakened tonight by someone in your family who says to you, ‘Put...
Mom had always taught all of us to examine decisions by reversibility—that is, to hedge our bets. When you couldn’t decide between two things, she suggested you choose the one that allowed you to chan...
If you stayed at home, you might not get the opportunity to go to that place again. But if you went, you could always com back.
If heathen prayers were indeed the best of all, then mine should count big time.
He’s also able to accept death. He’s not happy about it, but he’s perfectly calm. When I stop all this treatment, it will be because it’s time to stop.
For me, there’s something about planes that isolates and intensifies sadness, the way a looking glass can magnify the sun until it grows unbearably hot and burns.
A father and his son are in a terrible car crash. The father is killed instantly—but the son survives, barely, his life hanging in the balance. He’s rushed to the hospital and into surgery, but there’...