Grief is at once a public and a private experience. One's inner, inexpressible disruption cannot be fully realized in one's public persona.

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.

Pursue your dreams. You will be amazed about what you can achieve it.

Transformation, on the other hand, is creating beauty from horror or destruction (or, for beginners, an actually pleasant evening with the usual family problems).

Beware of unfriendly friends who come nicely dressed in friendly suits.

It’s very difficult sometimes to put into words one’s feelings, especially when one is not quite certain what those feelings are. (Catherine)

Problems don’t get fixed by ignoring them. Putting them off ultimately does more harm than good – all it does is waste time and burden us with stress.

Familiarity gives rise to contempt.

Even if you can't prevent another's sorrow, caring will lessen it.

We learn humility through accepting humiliations cheerfully.

To be healthy and happy, a person must live a life that includes a good variety of activities.

Once you start enjoying your life, the rest is easy.