Great Throughts Treasury

"Did I lose you? Never."

"Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should? It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."

"Did you feel guilty cursing God--you, of all people?' No,' he said. 'Because even in doing so, I was recognizing there was a greater power than me.' He paused. And that is how I began to heal."

"Didn't people call New Year's the loneliest night on the calendar? She took comfort in knowing somewhere on the planet, someone might be as miserable as she was."

"Die as a sacrifice is more worthy then a suicide."

"Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?"

"Do the kind of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won?t be dissatisfied, you won?t be envious, you won?t be longing for somebody else?s things. On the contrary, you?ll be overwhelmed with what comes back."

"Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I read? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person i want to be?' He turned his head to his shoulder as if the bird were there now. ?Is today the day I did?? he said."

"Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it -- and have it repeated to us -- over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore."

"Do you take care of others or take care of your 'inner child?' return to traditional values or reject tradition as useless? Seek success or seek simplicity? Just Say No or Just Do It?"

"Do you understand? Why we're here? This is not your heaven. It's mine."

"Don?t let go too soon, but don?t hang on too long."

"Don't assume that it's too late to get involved."

"Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent... But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it... You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief... But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment."

"Don't get too attached to anything."

"Dor came from a time before the written word, a time when if you wished to speak with someone, you walked to see them. This time was different. The tools of this era?phones, computers?enabled people to move at a blurring pace. Yet despite all they accomplished, they were never at peace. They constantly checked their devices to see what time it was?the very thing Dor had tried to determine once with a stick, a stone, and a shadow."

"Dor felt a warm, calming feeling when he said those words- she is my wife - because ever since they were children she was like the sky to him , forever around."

"Dor shook his head. The phrase. ?What does it mean?? Sarah wondered if he was kidding. ?Time flies? You know, like, time goes really fast and suddenly you?re saying goodbye and it?s like no time passed at all? His eyes drifted. He liked it. Time flies. With you,? she added."

"DOR: there is a reason God limits our days. VICTOR: why? DOR: to make each one precious."

"Dying is not in synonymous with Useless."

"Dying is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is Something else. So many of the people who came to visit me are unhappy? Why?... For one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own. Most people can't do it. They're more unhappy than me-even in my current condition. I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving caring souls. How many people can say that?"

"Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning."

"Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth."

"Eddie admitted that some of his life he'd spent hiding from God, and the rest of the time he thought he went unnoticed."

"Eddie looked again at the graveside gathering. He wondered if he'd had a funeral. He wondered if anyone came. He saw the priest reading from the bible and the mourners lowering their heads. This was the day the Blue Man had been buried, all those years ago. Eddie had been there, a little boy, fidgeting through the ceremony, with no idea of the role he'd played in it. I still don't understand, Eddie whispered. What good came from your death? You lived, the Blue Man answered. But we barely knew each other. I might as well have been a stranger. The Blue Man put his arms on Eddie's shoulders. Eddie felt that warm, melting sensation. Strangers, the Blue Man said, are just family you have yet to come to know."

"Eddie told her he had made things square and her eyebrows lifted and her lips spread and Eddie felt and old, warm feeling he had missed for years, the simple act of making his wife happy."

"Einstein once postulated that if you traveled at an enormous rate of speed, time would actually slow down relative to the world you left behind, so that seeing the future without aging alongside it was at least theoretically, possible."

"Embrace aging."

"Ends are for yesterdays, not tomorrows."

"Ethan had told the world, the world sympathized, and Sarah Lemon was now and forever (because wasn't cyberspace instantly forever?) Someone you had to be 'nice' to, a pathetic girl who just didn't get it, the scourge of her generation, the lowest rung on the ladder, a loser."

"Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person i want to be? Is today the day I die?"

"Every person on the planet-including Grace, Lorraine, Victor and Sarah- will instantly stop aging. And one person with start."

"Everyone is in such a hurry. People haven?t found meaning in their lives, so they?re running all the time looking for it. They think the next car, the next house, the next job. Then they find those things are empty, too, and they keep running. Once you start running, it?s hard to slow yourself down."

"Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour? Dor said. It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time. He lowered his hand from Victor's eyes. When you are measuring time, you are not living it. I know."

"Fairness, he said, does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young. Strangers, the Blue Man said, are just family you have yet to come to know. Sacrifice is a part of life. It is supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."

"Faith, it is said, is better than belief, because belief is when someone else does the thinking."

"Fear is how you lose your life...a little bit at a time...What we give to fear, we take away from...faith."

"Find someone to share your heart, give to your community, be at peace with yourself, try to be as human as you can be."

"For as spiritual as some people think my books are, I?ve never really dealt with religious things."

"For better or for worse, I?ve watched people die in front of me. I see how they are in the end. And they?re not cynical. In the end, they wanna hold somebody?s hand. And that?s real to me."

"For many of us, the curtain had just come down on childhood."

"For My Dad ~ I miss you every day. Lost love is still love, Eddie. It just takes a different form, that's all. You can't hold their hand... You can't tousle their hair... But when those senses weaken another one comes to life... Memory... Memory becomes your partner. You hold it... you dance with it... Life has to end, Eddie... Love doesn't."

"For years I wrote in my basement. More recently I graduated to one floor above, an office with all my books and music and - ta da! - a window."

"Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others."

"Friends are great. But friends are not going to be here on a night when you're coughing and can't sleep and someone has to sit up all night with you, comfort you, try to be helpful."

"Getting old we can deal with. Being old is the problem."

"Giving to other people makes me feel alive. Not my car or my house. Not what I look like in the mirror. When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were feeling sad..."

"God sings, we hum along, and there are many melodies, but it's all one song - one same, wonderful, human song."

"Got an hour or two? That?s all it takes for one of my books."

"Had he known his death was imminent, he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he did what we all do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in the world were still to come."