Quotes from Michelle Richmond

Life isn't just about major characters and the big events. It's about everyone, everything, in between.

I had never really thought of children as people, just as mysterious and needy creatures on their way to something greater.

Try to enjoy every day, but know that you will not. Try to forgive others and yourself. Forget the bad stuff, remember the good. Eat cookies, but not too many. Challenge yourself to do more, to see more. Make plans, celebrate when they pan out, persevere when they don't. Laugh when things are good, laugh when things are bad. Love with abandon, love selflessly. Life is simple, life is complex, life is short. Your only real currency is time—use it wisely.

No matter how bad the news, exit the room with a smile, she would tell us. In the early days, I took her advice as gospel, but over the years I came to realize she'd been mistaken. Sometimes optimism is not called for. Sometimes, what is needed is an acknowledgment of just how bad things are, and how much worse they might get.

The longer something remains a priority, he said, the more it becomes second nature, hardwired in our minds and actions.

I've thought far more about marriage in recent months than I ever did before. What is the marriage contract? The general assumption we have about marriage is that it involves two people building a life together. But what I wonder is this: Does it require each person to give up the life they built before? Must we shed our former selves? Do we have to give up that which was once important to us as a sacrifice to the gods of marriage?

The gate closes behinds us.

Are they going to let you to make up the test?" I ask.

Restrict you answer to 114 words or fewer.

The suburbs are a scary place. I'm glad I live in New York City, where crime is more predictable.

56 percent of learned information is forgotten within an hour of being encoded. By the time one day has passed, another 10 percent is gone. A month after the information is learned, 80 percent of it has vanished. How

History is made not of facts set in stone but of the stories we tell.