Quotes from Michael J. Fox

In my experience, a mentor doesn't necessarily tell you what to do, but more importantly, tells you what they did or might do, then trusts you to draw your own conclusions and act accordingly. If you succeed, they'll take one step back, and if you screw up, they'll take one step closer. Whatever it is they teach you…pass it on.

This is why the license plates say Beautiful British Columbia, and I realized just how much I would miss it. But all this natural beauty exists only in response to rain, I reminded myself, and the occasional day of technicolor spectacle was bought and paid for with weeks and weeks of dull, damp gray. I wasn't going to miss the gray. If

If you don't take risks, there's no room for luck. I took a chance. I got lucky.

Explaining how the two of them, up there in the Green Mountains, had managed to dial down life's urgencies and dial up its pleasures and richness, Gary put it beautifully and poetically: "We've discovered a way" he confided with a sense of gleeful wonderment, "to bend time." I imagined Tracy and me engaged in a similar conspiracy a dozen years or so from now.

I'm sure there are many other Forrest Gump moments that I'm forgetting. I don't mention them as boasts, but rather as evidence of how ridiculously lucky I have been to have lived the life that I have.

Still, what's happened before and what may happen later can't be as important as what's happening now.

This message is so simple, yet it gets forgotten. The people living with the condition are the experts.

We can all take something positive from the class of 2020; to accept what has happened in the past, to embrace the present, and to remain open to the probability that it will get better in the future. I hear echoes of Stephen Pollan in that advice: With gratitude, optimism becomes sustainable.

Being in control of your own destiny is a myth—and wouldn't be half as much fun anyway. Pay attention to what's happening around you. Read the book before you see the movie. Remember, though you, alone, are responsible for your own happiness, it's still okay to feel responsible for someone else's.

We can all take something positive from the class of 2020; to accept what has happened in the past, to embrace the present, and to remain open to the probability that it will get better in the future.

I was happy as a clam. But who wants to be a clam?

Recovering alcoholics have an expression: "If you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're pissing all over today." With all that's happened, it's been liberating to understand that I don't have to carry the weight of all my disappointments or expectations. Sometimes it just is what it is. I can accept that.

Sure, it may be one step forward and two steps back, but after a time with Parkinson's, I've learned that what is important is making that step count; always looking up.

Christopher Reeve had believed in a formula: optimism + information = hope.

Once you cross a certain threshold, money doesn't get you more happiness. Our main concern is that if you have growth which is blind, fed by people's growing consumption, it's not really sustainable. What we are trying to do in our own little context is see what pattern of growth will be sustainable and desirable." Fellow Traveler The secretary introduces me to another government minister, a fortyish gentleman who has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

Bhutanese believe that economic development should never come at the cost of their people's happiness. Therefore, in every trade deal the government enters into (for example, the sale of hydroelectric power to neighboring India), culture is valued more than cash.

Hope is informed optimism

was an antidote to the self-consciousness that consumed me as an eccentric teenager in search of an identity.

I began to long for the benign indifference of Robert Redford flossing his molars.

Part of the disease's 'gift' is a certain stark clarity about the rest of your life.

This is what my lifelong search for room to maneuver had come to: a box of water in a lightless, windowless nine-by-sixteen-foot room—afraid to leave my artificial womb, to go outside where I could only cause trouble, disappoint my family and myself. Best, I thought, to stay right here where I couldn't fuck anything up. And stay I would, day after day, sometimes three or four times on weekends, for hours at a time, just trying to keep my head below water. Connecticut—Christmas

A cultura judaica, eu começava a entender, colocava uma estrutura e um ritual em volta dessa transição [da infância para a vida adulta], instruindo essas formas de vida emergentes a reconhecer e aceitar suas responsabilidades consigo mesmo, com suas famílias e com os outros. Elas são aclamadas e celebradas bem quando estão mais suscetíveis a se sentir indesejadas e incompreendidas. (p. 180)

Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there's got to be a way through it.

Incurable disease is a nonpartisan problem that will require a bipartisan solution. The desire to alleviate suffering and save lives speaks not to our allegiance to any party or ideology but to our humanity.