“Once heaven is done with grandma, we’d like her back, thanks.”

Because one thing God gave us- and I’m afraid it’s at times a little too much- is freewill. Freedom to choose. I believe he gave us everything needed to build a beautiful world, if we choose wisely.

She loved me coming and going, at my worst and at my best. She had a bottomless well of love for me.

Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.

No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we’re alone.

Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.

I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on the good things still in my life. I don’t allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each every morning, a few tears, and that’s all.

But fates are connected in ways we don’t understand.

When someone is in your heart, they’re never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times.

When you come to the end, that’s where God begins.

Heaven is always and forever around us and no soul remembered is ever really gone.

It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there.

Heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners.

You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.

Don’t let go too soon, but don’t hold on too long.

The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

You can’t get stuck on what should have happened. That doesn’t help you.

I have a real spiritual family.

In Italy, the concept of the family is very important.

It is not necessary that the scion of a singing family, even if he sings, can excel in it. In order to reach his peak he has to work very, very hard.

I don’t have a ton of friends, but the friends I have are great ones. I don’t have huge family, but the family I have is a great one.

To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.

I didn’t have a very religious family.

My stepfather stepped in where no man would’ve stepped in – six kids, five of them boys – and that’s heroic.

I never bring a role home with me. The moment they say, ‘It’s a wrap,’ it’s gone completely. I’m a totally ruthless professional, and life is my family, not my work.