Our way is not soft grass, it's a mountain path with lots of rocks. But it goes upward, forward, toward the sun.

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the easy ones that lie within it.

Life is little more than a loan shark: it exacts a very high rate of interest for the few pleasures it concedes.

Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.

Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibers, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.

What I want to tell you today is not to move into that world where you're alone with yourself and your mantra and your fitness program or whatever it is that you might use to try to control the world by closing it out. I want to tell you just to live in the mess. Throw yourself out into the convulsions of the world. I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't believe progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm telling you to live in it. Try and get it. Take chances, make your own work, take pride in it. Seize the moment.

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what preserve the heart and secure comfort.

I want you to realize that this whole thing is just a grand adventure. A fine show. The trick is to play in it and look at it at the same time.

Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.