“He had high hopes for society, and though his hopes were too often dashed, he remained a raging optimist.”

“Another way to be prepared is to think negatively. Yes, I'm a great optimist. but, when trying to make a decision, I often think of the worst case scenario. I call it 'the eaten by wolves factor.' If I do something, what's the most terrible thing that could happen? Would I be eaten by wolves? One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist, is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose. There are a lot of things I don't worry about, because I have a plan in place if they do.”

“One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose.”

“What is the most appropriate thing to say to a friend who was about to die. He answered:”tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Whenever he goes, you also g. He will not be alone".”

“In the fifty years my parents were married, in the thousands of conversations my dad had with me, it had just never come up. And so there I was, weeks after his death, getting another lesson from him about the meaning of sacrifice—and about the power of humility”

“I was hugely impressed... was the ultimate example of a man who knew what he didn't know, was perfectly willing to admit it, and didn't want to leave until he understood. That's heroic to me. I wish every grad student had that attitude.”

“[Jim Graham] had been a linebacker at Penn State, and was seriously old-school. I mean, really old-school; like he thought the forward pass was a trick play.”