“I have seen enormous changes. I have not seen enough change. I, too, can hardly wait.”

“I may not have all the education but I do have common sense, and I know how to treat people.”

“Time dims memory. But not that kind. Somewhere in a corner of the brain, one little cell never forgets. It keeps the song that, heard again, recreates the room, the person, the moment. It preserves the phrase or the laugh or the gesture that resurrects a friend long gone. It knows precisely where you were and what you were doing when you heard about Pearl Harbor if you're old enough, or Kennedy's assassination, or Martin Luther King's, or the Challenger explosion. Every detail is frozen in memory, despite all the years. It keeps the innocuous question, too. The question that sometime later, when all the synapses are working, produces the epiphany, the moment when you're driving along and you realize that finally you understand. And why did it take you so long?”

“I have seen the best of you, and the worst of you, and I choose both.”

“God seems to far away.Does He? Have you noted the splendid display of wildflowers? Have you listened to a child's laughter or watched a sunrise or a sunset? Have you seen peace on a person's face when they should be miserable?I want that for you. I want you to be able to face very moment of the day knowing God loves you.”

“It's interesting how a random event can change our lives in ways that would be impossible to imagine, isn't it?”

“It's the job of old people to disapprove of everything young people do. . .If we don't disapprove, then the young have nothing to fight against and the world will never change. It cannot move on.”