Key Takeaways:
- The old woman looked at my sister, raised her fist defiantly in the air and said, “So be afraid! And then do it anyway! That was 35 years ago and I have never forgotten it. It was a revelation — it’s not about being unafraid. It’s about being afraid and doing it anyway.
- I’m not confined to my wheelchair – I am liberated by it. If it wasn’t for my wheelchair, I would be bed-bound and never able to leave my room or house. (Perspective is all that matters)
- “Don’t be a dick to your dog. He’s a few years of your life, but you are all of his”
- “I’m too old to start that. I’ll be 40 when I get my degree.” My friend said “If you don’t do it, you’ll still be 40, but without the degree.”
- My mom was dying. A friend told me “you have your whole life to freak out about this– don’t do it in front of her. ”
- I told her that I just wanted to find the right person. Without missing a beat she said, “Everybody is looking for the right person, and nobody is trying to be the right person.”
- I remember telling my dad, a stoic man who has only said he loves me maybe three times in his life, that this is a reason that I don’t know if I want children. I don’t think I could handle something like this. His response was: Even one minute with you in my life is worth whatever pain I would feel if you had died.
- After getting rejected by a bunch of colleges in the same week, my dad (who is a writer) said “I was rejected by Stanford three times, and now my books are in their library. You’ve got to be better than them.”
- Next year, you’ll wish you had started today.
- “Any decision you make in this household, you make three times. Once when you make it, once when your brother makes the same decision after watching you do it, and once when your sister makes the same decision after watching you and your brother do it. How you treat your brother will tell him how he can treat your sister; and how you treat your sister tells her how she will expect to be treated for the rest of her life, even as far as her future boyfriends.”
- Then he then he said “Do you think he feels any of your hatred for him?” I thought for a few seconds and answered “No. He probably doesn’t.” And then he said “But you feel all of it. And you don’t deserve that. It’s time to forgive the man. Not because he deserves it. But because you do.”