Quotes from Will Schwalbe

even the stay-at-home mothers subjected their kids to a kind of benign neglect back then.

Of course you could do more—you can always do more, and you should do more—but still, the important thing is to do what you can, whenever you can.

Her new mantra was a piece of wisdom given to her by a friend of my sister who specialized in palliative care: "Make Plans and Cancel Them.

I asked Mom why she thought that was, and she pointed out that joy is a product not of whether characters live or die but of what they've realized and achieved, or how they are remembered.

Not feeling well is no excuse for forgetting that there are other people in the world.

I used to say that the greatest gift you could ever give anyone is a book. But I don't say that anymore because I no longer think it's true. I now say that a book is the second greatest gift. I've come to believe that the greatest gift you can give people is to take the time to talk with them about a book you've shared.

Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.

don't like being interrupted either—but I interrupt other people. I often forget that other people's stories aren't simply introductions to my own more engaging, more dramatic, more relevant, and better-told tales, but rather ends in themselves, tales I can learn from or repeat or dissect or savor.

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead,

But I do want you to look after each other. I'll be very cross if I hear that any of you are fighting. And if anyone causes trouble, I'll come back from the grave and get 'em.

The latter therapy has its roots in a philosophy called Naikan, developed by Ishin Yoshimoto. Naikan reminds people to be grateful for everything. If you are sitting in a chair, you need to realize that someone made that chair, and someone sold it, and someone delivered it—and you are the beneficiary of all that. Just because they didn't do it especially for you doesn't mean you aren't blessed to be using it and enjoying it.

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, which had won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005,

I wanted to stop caring quite so much what everyone thought about me and instead just be satisfied when I was doing the right thing.

The truth is that people never realize their lives are about to change in unforeseen ways—that's just the nature of unforeseen ways.

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking

I guess we're all in it together," she said. And I couldn't help but smile at the other meaning of the phrase. We're all in the end-of-our-life book club, whether we acknowledge it or not; each book we read may well be the last, each conversation the final one. I

I'd read in Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith,

For me, the phone remains miraculous in a way that electronic communication just isn't. A phone brings the voice of a friend. It's live. Email is a movie—once you get it, nothing you do will change it. A call is theater—surprising and unpredictable. What's more, your presence is essential.

not. Both Mom and I had read it when it came out in 1999 and had recommended it to each other simultaneously. In

We'd both already read several novels by Tóibín: The Master and The Story of Night and The Blackwater Lightship.

Christopher Isherwood's Christopher and His Kind,

I often forget that other people's stories aren't simply introductions to my own more engaging, more dramatic, more relevant, and better-told tales, but rather ends in themselves, tales I can learn from or repeat or dissect or savor.

the book, Lamott says the two best prayers are "Help me, Help me, Help me" and "Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly.