“My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But its a strange fact that my long-te...”

“God doesnt take things away to be cruel. He takes things away to make room for other things. He takes things away to lighten us. He takes things away so we can fly.”

“Someday, I suppose Ill give up, and sit in the rocking chair. But Ill probably be rocking fast, because I dont know what Ill do without a job.”

“God doesn’t take things away to be cruel. He takes things away to make room for other things. He takes things away to lighten us. He takes things away so we can fly.”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“A nation discovers its truest dignity when it cherishes the dignity of those from whom it has not heard for a very long time.”

“I pray for my mother. That if she can't ever recover what she's lost or what she's losing, that she not feel like she's lost. I pray that we make her feel necessary and valued as long as possible. ...”

“Dementia: Is it more painful to forget, or to be forgotten?”

“Dementia was like a truth serum.”

“When a fine old carpet is eaten by mice, the colors and patterns of what's left behind do not change,' wrote my neighbor and friend, the poet Jane Hirschfield, after she visited an old friend suffe...”

“Psychologist: "This, ah, is a new sort of, ah, psychopathology that we're only now beginning to, ah, understand. These, ah, super-serial killers have no, ah, 'type' but, ah, rather consider everyon...”