I think we can work through a lot of political and international problems, but what really frightens me is what's happening environmentally.

I had this odd sibling rivalry with America.

You know, if you hang around this earth long enough you really see how things come full circle.

It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward.

And as far as false hope, there is no such thing. There is only hope or the absence of hope - nothing else.

Life Lesson 3: You can't rush grief. It has its own timetable. All you can do is make sure there are lots of soft places around - beds, pillows, arms, laps.

Christopher Reeve understood that everything begins with hope. His vision of walking again, his belief that he would be able to in his lifetime, towered over his broken body.

Stories live in your blood and bones, follow the seasons and light candles on the darkest night-every storyteller knows she or he is also a teacher.

Alzheimer's disease locks all the doors and exits. There is no reprieve, no escape.

[On her father, Ronald Reagan:] How do you argue with someone who states that the people who are sleeping on the grates of the streets of America 'are homeless by choice'?

When I was a child, our summer days were spent swimming; chlorine in my hair was like perfume to me.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

Theme-park approach to nature. We judge plants and animals by whether they're entertaining to us. We gravitate toward animals and plants that are big, dramatic, beautiful and at eye-level.

It was right then and there that she'd realized there was no quota on misery for people, no quantifiable threshold that once reached, got you miraculously taken out of the distress pool.

Learning to be aware of feelings, how they arise and how to use them creatively so they guide us to happiness, is an essential lifetime skill.

The question is not what man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate.

The first book we fall in love with shapes us every bit as much as the first person we fall in love with.

You don't see a lot of MBAs as CEOs. The MBAs tend to get hired by the CEOs.

Everyone is broken-hearted except for the drastically unimaginative

Did you eat a lot of paint chips as a child?