“I had patients who didn’t die because they had too many pets to try to find homes for. It’s why women live longer than men with the same health problems.”

There is a pride in speaking this language.

By relaxation, I don’t mean falling asleep in front of the TV set or unwinding with friends. The kind I’m talking about is a quieting of mental activity and withdrawal of body and mind from external stimulation.

In my case, it was a strange bit of weather that caused one to charge me.

When you embrace the mystery and open yourself to it, a new life is created, resistant to the old problems.

They were sort of priding themselves. They would say, ‘He beat us at chess, but he’s still just an uncouth kid.’ So I decided to dress up.

I truly feel the best doctors are ones who are criticized by nurses, patients and family. They do not make excuses and learn from their mistakes.

Bobby and I were married in 1954 and by now we know that anger does not mean “I don’t love you” or “I want a divorce.” It means, “I am wounded and in need of love, and I feel safe telling you about it because you are my family.”

None of us are going to have perfect lives. Our own vision of what we think is good maybe different from what He [God] thinks. And we forget that. We think we know what’s best and we don’t.

What I learned was to live in my heart and to do what will make my happy, and that was not selfishness. It didn’t matter what job I took, my mother’s answer was, “Do what will make you happy.”

If you talk to your body, it will listen.

It can be tempting to blame others for our loss of direction. We get lots of information about life but little education in life from parents, teachers, and other authority figures who should know better from their experience. Information is about facts.

You can’t control the world, but when you control your thoughts, you bring order.

What if Jesus was the only normal person who ever lived?

Be grateful simply for being alive. When you are grateful for life, pure and simple, your life becomes one you can be grateful for. That may strike you as circular or even backward logic, but your attitude really does have an effect on how things work out.

Hoping means seeing that the outcome you want is possible and then working for it.

We destroy ourselves when we stop feeling. If you bury your feelings within you, you become a graveyard.

The people not only opened the doors of their homes to lend us a hand, but they opened their hearts to us. I learned that without the people, we could not survive and I knew that I owed them everything.