“He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

He’d half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat.

You fix what you can fix and you let the rest go. If there ain’t nothin to be done about it it aint even a problem. It’s just a aggravation.

If only my heart were stone.

Life is brief and to have to spend every day of it doing what somebody else wants you to do is not the way to live it.

If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.

You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don’t count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.

Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.

By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength.

The things that I loved were very frail. Very fragile. I didn’t know that. I thought they were indestructible. They weren’t.

Do you know what happens with people who cannot govern themselves? That’s right. Others come in to govern for them.

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.

The road has its own reasons and no two travelers will have the same understanding of those reasons. If indeed they come to an understanding of them at all.

There is for a man two things in life that are very important, head and shoulders above everything else. Find work you like, and find someone to live with you like. Very few people get both.

What joins men together is not the sharing of bread but the sharing of enemies.

I wasn’t very good in academics, but I could have been if I could have studied well. I was a smart kid.

Becoming an inspiration for kids is great. I want to inspire them to do whatever they want to.

Most people assume that women are responsible for households and child care. Most couples operate that way – not all. That fundamental assumption holds women back.

Life is not safe, and so our task is not to promise our kids there will be no turbulence. It’s to assure them that when the turbulence comes, we will all hold hands and get through it together.

I ask only child-free pals for parenting advice because they’re the only ones sane and well-rested enough to have any real insight.

You see much more of your children once they leave home.

Rock bottom is a crisis. And everyone wants to avoid crisis. But what ‘crisis’ means literally is ‘to sift’ – like a child who goes to the beach, lifts up the sand, and watches all the sand fall away, hoping that there’s treasure left over. That’s what crisis does.

I’m always trying to push myself to the limit to see what I can do. It’s my strong will that I’ve always had since I was a kid.