For her life, like human life everywhere on the planet, had speeded up and speeded up until peace was rarely possible. Always there was movement, noise, inevitable and constant distraction [. ...] a madness had seized the earth. The madness of speed. As if to speed things up meant to actually go somewhere. And where, after all, was there to go? The present is all there ever is, no matter how much you lean forward or back.

This life soon be over … Heaven last always

We recall that to the Cherokee, as to other people who have noticed how long it sometimes takes for humans to develop fully, adulthood comes--if it is coming at all--at the age of fifty-two.

Surely, we all can look back and see things in our lives that we wish we would have done differently. But the Bible says, "Make the most of each day."4 Yesterday is gone; tomorrow may not come. You must live for today. Start right where you are. You can't do anything about what's gone, but you can do a great deal about what remains.

Cancer is such a wake-up call to remind us how high the cosmic stakes really are and how short and brief and frail life really is.

The task of life is to face sacred moments.

Life is not dated merely by years. Events are sometimes the best calendars.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means.

Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.

It is futile to wish for a long life, and then to give so little care to living well.

I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life. Out of the blankness that surrounds me I must pluck the incident after incident after incident whose little explosions keep me going.

Life is not too short... we just wait too long to begin it.