“Will having a newborn distract from the time we have together?" she asked. "Don't you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?""Wouldn't it be great if it did?" I said....”

“Even if you are perfect the World isn't.”

“Human knowledge is never contained in just one person.”

“Literature not only illuminated another's experience, it provided, I believed, the richest material for moral reflection”

“I was searching for a vocabulary with which to make sense of death, to find a way to begin defining myself and inching forward again. The privilege of direct experience had led me away from literar...”

“Humans are organisms, subject to physical laws, including alas, the one that says entropy always increases. Diseases are molecules misbehaving; the basic requirement of life is metabolism, and deat...”

“My work was done, so it was time to start digging my grave again.”

“In the grave, there is neither learning nor working. Learn while you can, work while you can.”

“With her I'd buried myself, every memory of who I was now, six feet under with the sister I'd put there.”

“Work should be personal. For all of us. Not just for the artist and entrepreneur. Work should have meaning for the accountant, the construction worker, the technologist, the manager and the clerk.”

“I used to think of work as a bad word. Back in the corporate world, work was something that prevented me from living, something that kept me from feeling satisfied or fulfilled or passionate. Even ...”

“It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embr...”