“Pope John Paul II was always a teacher. He taught us many things: how to pray, how to have patience, how to be loving. And I realized something about his last moments… that he was teaching us all how to die.”

“I believe that none of us can conceive the full import of what Christ did for us in Gethsemane, but I am grateful every day of my life for His atoning sacrifice in our behalf. At the last moment, He could have turned back. But He did not. He passed beneath all things that He might save all things. In doing so, He gave us life beyond this mortal existence. He reclaimed us from the Fall of Adam. To the depths of my very soul, I am grateful to Him. He taught us how to live. He taught us how to die. He secured our salvation.”

“I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able to honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.”

“It seems as if no man had ever died in America before, for in order to die you must first have lived. These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live.”

“He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.”

“The end of Religion is not to teach us how to die, but how to live....”