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.

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.

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.

One of the ideas I've clung to most of my life is that if I just try hard enough it will work out.

Leadership is the day to day communications about the real issues.

To say that life is nothing but a property of certain peculiar combinations of atoms is like saying that Shakespeare's Hamlet is nothing but a property of a peculiar combination of letters.

From education by the Church to education by Germanic value is a step of several generations.

Yes, of course, black Americans are a special group, and I'm disappointed that they're not Republicans, given our traditions. We're not getting much love in return, despite our efforts.

If you have one good series, you know, it's a blessing. Two good series is unusual. Three is a phenomenon.

The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.

Dust does rise, doesn't it? And so can I.

Feel that you are happy without any cause for happiness.

In some ways you become who you really are, if you work hard enough on who you wish to be.

Great teachers have high expectations for their students, but higher expectations for themselves.