the territory of grief ... is both cruel and commonplace.

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

Like a starfish, the heart endures its amputation.

Old dogs can be a regal sight. Their exuberance settles over the years into a seasoned nobility, their routines become as locked into yours as the quietest and kindest of marriages.

Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.

What they never tell you about grief is that missing someone is the simple part.

memory is both the curse of grief and the eventual talisman against it; what at first seems unbearable becomes the succor that can outlast pain.

Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn't survive.

The real hell of this," he told her, "is that you're going to get through it.

That she was irreplaceable became a bittersweet loyalty: Her death was what I had now instead of her.

Scratch a fantasy and you'll find a nightmare.

I think my influence on Donald Trump is way, way lower than what mainstream media has said.

Sin is a thing of time, but mercy is from everlasting. Transgression is but of yesterday, but mercy was ever of old. Before you and I sought the Lord, the Lord sought us.

Yesterday was Election Day. If we have any Democrats in the audience, I'm sorry but you're going to have to give up your seats.

To work from nature is to improvise.

I have always been anonymous, that is the position I should be. And it is hard to say why or how you did something, it just happens.

If white and black and red and brown can come together to focus our energies on overcoming the racial malaise that persists, then this will have been a great moment.

Considering yourself selflessly selfish is a principle of all great thinkers

Here's to the man Who owns the land That bears the grapes That makes the wine That tastes as good As this does.

Don't list to those who say YOU CAN'T. Listen to the voice inside yourself that says, I CAN.