“Stealing someone else's words frequently spares the embarrassment of eating your own. ”

“In some ways, it's easier to settle for someone else's version of success than to risk falling short at one's own.”

“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”

“everything we own will one day belong to someone else, but everything we are, is ours forever.”

“It is my own language, limited as it is. I will have to learn to work with it. There was a kind of poetry I was seeking in my prose, word to be laid against word in just a certain way, a kind of word color, a march of words and sentences, the color to be squeezed out of simple words, simple sentence construction.”

“Well, it seems to me that the best relationships-the ones that last-are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship.”

“Our society has tried to make death invisible, thinking that if we ignore it long enough it will go away. Often we as family and loved ones are so afraid of death that even mentioning the word to terminal patients is taboo. We think the dying are oblivious to what is happening to them. Sadly, a dying person frequently feels afraid to bring it up him or herself. When I enter a hospital room I often hear a sigh of relief. At last, someone is here to help the family come to terms with what is playing out before them. Death has too long been the elephant in the living room, while everyone awkwardly discusses the weather.”