Robert Fulghum

“It’s harder to talk about, but what I really, really, really want for Christmas is just this: I want to be 5 years old again for an hour. I want to laugh a lot and cry a lot. I want to be picked or rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, and carried up to be just one more time. I know what I really want for Christmas: I want my childhood back. People who think good thoughts give good gifts.”

“It doesn’t matter what you say you believe - it only matters what you do.”

“And I’m not confused about the lack of, or the need for, imagination in low or high places. We could do better we must do better. There are far worse things to drop on people than crayolas.”

“Remember, most of us got something for nothing the first time just by showing up here at birth. Now we have to qualify.”

“Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this “something” cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It’s what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn’t count it. Nothing counts without it.”

“We can do no great things; only small things with great love.(mother Teresa)”

“But love may have to be left off the exam. Most of us will never learn.”

“So you drive as far as you can, even when you can clearly read the sign. You want to think you are exempt, that it doesn’t apply to you. But it does. Life is still a dead end. And we still have a hard time believing it”

“The leaves let go, the seeds let go, and I must let go sometimes, too, and cast my lot with another of nature’s imperfect but tenacious survivors.”

“Machines and relatives get most of the yelling. But never trees. As for people, well, the Solomon islanders may have a point. Yelling at living thing does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.”

“Speed and efficiency do not always increase the quality of life.”

“There is nothing in your budget for joy. No books, no flowers, no music, not even a cold beer. And there is nothing in your budget to give away to someone else. We don’t help people who don’t have better values than you do.”

“It wasn’t in books. It wasn’t in a church. What I needed to know was out there in the world.”

“Imagination is more important than information. Einstein said that, and he should know. And they come. And they look. And we push. And they fly. We to stay and die on our beds. They to go and die howsoever, yet inspiring those who come after them to find their own edge. And fly.”

“It’s the spirit here that counts. The time may be long, the vehicle may be strange or unexpected. But if the dream is held close to the heart, and imagination is applied to what there is close at hand, everything is still possible.”

“Why is love easy? I don’t know. And the raccoons don’t say.”

“Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well.”

“I often say that I don't worry about the meaning of life--I can't handle that big stuff. What concerns me is the meaning in life--day by day, hour by hour, while I'm doing whatever it is that I do. What counts is not what I do, but how I think about myself while I'm doing it.”

“Love is the grand prize and the garbage heap. Love is a spiritual root canal and the only thing that makes life worth living. Love is a little taste of always and a big bite of nothing. And love is everything in between these extremes.”

“To ponder is not to brood or grieve or even meditate. It is to wonder at a deep level.”

“Making a living and having a life are not the same thing. Making a living and making a life that's worthwhile are not the same thing. Living the good life and living a good life are not the same thing. A job title doesn't even come close to answering the question. "What do you do?".”

“Imagination is better than knowledge.”

“Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts”

“If I don't have time to live my life well the first time, when am I going to find the time to go back and live it over?”

“But it does no good--solves nothing--to distance myself from the front lines of human need by using the mail as a safe shelter. I believe that serving the best ends of humanity means getting out in the middle of it just as it is, not staying home writing checks and thinking hopeful thoughts. The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are. And you're damned right that's idealistic. No apology. When idealism goes into the trash as junk mail, we're finished.”

“Peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something you are, something you do,and something you give away. ”

“Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw some and paint some and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.”

“Once you know where the roller coaster is going, are you in for the ride?”

“If you tell people you talk to God, they'll think you're religious, but if you say God talks to you, it's ten to one they'll think you're crazy.”

“It is the chair in honor of all those who, however competently, embrace the impossible. Sit in that chair someday.”

“Never, ever regret or apologize for believing that when one man or one woman decides to risk addressing the world with truth, the world may stop what it is doing and hear. There is too much evidence to the contrary.”

“Above all, if what you've done is stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid.”

“The heart will turn to a prune if love is always by the numbers. How will you know if someone really loves you if they only meet your expectations and not your needs?”

“Is it always to be a winners-losers world, or can we keep everyone in the game? Do we still have what it takes to find a better way?”

“Wherever and however any one of us may be conceived, it is the same. We come into being in the arms of God.”

“We even make ourselves up, fusing what we are with what we wish into what we must become. I'm not sure why it must be so, but it is.”

“If only the scientific experts could come up with something to get it out of our minds. One cup of fixit fizzle that will lift the dirt from our lives, soften our hardness, protect our inner parts, improve our processing, reduce our yellowing and wrinkling, improve our natural color, and make us sweet and good.”

“Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found.”

“A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.”

“Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.”

“Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts...”

“One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands - bare hands - and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands - a kind of mad courage.”

“The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.”

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

“I do not want to know what you will hope for. I want to know what you will work for. I do not want your sympathy for the needs of humanity. I want your muscle. As the wagon driver said when they came to a long, hard hill: ‘Them that’s going on with us, get out and push. Them that ain’t, get out of the way’. ”