“My mother died of colon cancer one week after my eleventh birthday, and that fact has shaped my life. All that I have become and much that I have not become, I trace directly or indirectly to her death. ... In my professional and personal life, I have lived with the awareness of death's imminence for more than half a century, and labored in its constant presence for all but the first decade of that time.”

“In my despair I rememberthat there is life after death;there is life after deathand I have no problem.But I ask:Oh my God,is there life before death?”

“The goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God.Prayer becomes real when we grasp the reality and goodness of God's constant presence with 'the real me.' Jesus lived his everyday life in conscious awareness of his Father.”

“I've spent my whole life trying to get over having had Nikki for a mother, and I have to say that from day one after she died, I liked having a dead mother much more than having an impossible one. [p. 47]”

“I have to tell you it was the first time even after all these years of expecting my own death that i truly knew what it meant to die because with you gone there was nothing left for me to live for.”

“I once met Death, but she told me that she was on her period. Because of that, I couldn't sleep with her. When she came back to me the second time, I simply ignored her, which really pissed her off. Now, Death has become my enemy. I love the fact that Death is my enemy, and yet I trust her more than anyone else.”