“Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?”

“How do you make love to someone when you know they’ll be gone forever the next day? How do you spend the last few hours with someone when you know there will never beanything after that?”

“Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.”

“Why do anything-- why wash my hair, why read Moby Dick, why fall in love, why sit through six hours of Nicholas Nickleby, why care about American intervention in Central America, why spend time trying to get into the right schools, why dance to the music when all of us are just slouching toward the same inevitable conclusion? The shortness of life, I keep saying, makes everything seem pointless when I think about the longness of death.”

“Don't spend your precious time asking "Why isn't the world a better place?" It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is "How can I make it better?" To that there is an answer.”

“We're here for such a short amount of time. Why do we spend any of it building sandcastles?”