Quotes About Reflection

Why did I always need to do something, like referring one person to another, just for the sake of doing something, when sometimes, perhaps, it was better to do nothing?

That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves.

joy is a product not of whether characters live or die but of what they've realized and achieved, or how they are remembered.

How does a doctor tell you that it's over, that there are things they could do but probably shouldn't, and that if your aim is quality of life and not quantity of life, there simply are no good next treatments?

I was learning that when you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time. Yet

What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?" It helped you remember that people aren't here for you; everyone is here for one another.

Mom agreed but pointed out that she'd been doing the same with others too—talking about books with my sister and brother and some of her friends. "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.

and sister and father and mother had. I was learning that when you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.

You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them.

That's one of the amazing things great books like this do—they don't just get you to see the world differently, they get you to look at people, the people all around you, differently.

What I suddenly understood was that a thank-you note isn't the price you pay for receiving a gift, as so many children think it is, a kind of minimum tribute or toll, but an opportunity to count your

Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, Sir Kevin, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time, one could go to New Zealand.' The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference, there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal

I'm not the same reader when I finish a book as I was when I started. Brains are tangles of pathways, and reading creates new ones. Every book changes your life. So I like to ask; How is this book changing mine?

That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves." Mom

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.

book called The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch,

We can't do much for the people we've lost, but we can remember them and we can read for them: the books they loved, and books we think they might have chosen. Maybe the reading can help us answer the questions they would have asked us if they were still here to ask them. Maybe the reading can help us figure out how to honor their lives and continue their legacies.

Reading is the best way I know to learn how to examine your life. By comparing what you've done to what others have done, and your thoughts and theories and feelings to those of others, you learn about yourself and the world around you. Perhaps that is why reading is one of the few things you do alone that can make you feel less alone. It is a solitary activity that connects you to others.

Books focused her mind, calmed her, took her outside of herself;

What do we owe the dead, our dead? Maybe it's first that we need to remember them.

Really, whenever you read something wonderful, it changes your life, even if you aren't aware of it.

Here is Chang Ch'ao on reading at different times in your life: "Reading books in one's youth is like looking at the moon through a crevice; reading books in middle age is like looking at the moon in one's courtyard; and reading books in old age is like looking at the moon on an open terrace. This is because the depth of benefits of reading varies in proportion to the depth of one's own experience.

We found ourselves discussing the three kinds of fateful choices that exist in the two books: the ones characters make knowing that they can never be undone; the ones they make thinking they can but learn they can't; and the ones they make thinking they can't and only later come to understand, when it's too late, when "nothing can be undone," that they could have.

Usually, Mom popped right up after that [chemo] and gathered her things, and we were on our way. Today she remained in the chair. "Are you okay, Mom?" I asked. She looked very tired. "I am feeling a little sad. I know there's a life everlasting - but I wanted to do so much more here.