Generally, the younger the victim, the greater the grief. Yet even when the elderly or infirm have been afforded merciful relief, their loved ones are rarely ready to let go.

I’ve lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Why regret anything? Where does it get you to regret anything you’ve ever done in your life? It gets you nowhere. It’s a pathetic emotion that you can wallow in.

You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‚I release the need for this in my life‘.

People don’t realize what they had till it’s gone. Like President Kennedy, there was no one like him, the Beatles, and my man Elvis Presley. I was the Elvis of boxing.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

The wonderful news is that our Lord is a God of mercy, and He responds to repentance.

One aged man – one man – can’t fill a house.

Things won’t get better dwelling on the past. Accept what has happened. Then move forward.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

There are some hurts that we experience that can be forgiven but we won’t forget them.

We can feel joy even while having a bad day, a bad week, or even a bad year!

We fear that this moment will end, that we won’t get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. Often, our biggest fear is the knowledge that one day our bodies will cease functioning. So even when we are surrounded by all the conditions for happiness, our joy is not complete.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

God’s mercy is fresh and new every morning.

At some point, you grow out of being attracted to that flame that burns you over and over and over again.

The loss of life will be irreplaceable.

God’s mercy and grace give me hope – for myself, and for our world.

No matter how prepared you think you are for the death of a loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply.

I’m very picky; I’m never happy with anything. It’s so hard to give the record away and accept that you’re done.

I briefly did therapy, but after a while, I realised it is just like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can’t fix the weather – you just have to get on with it.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

In college, a loss is pretty devastating. That feeling kind of goes away in an 82-game season. You hate to lose, but you also have a lot more games to make up for it.

The Tao teaches us to let go of things. Use the 80/20 rule. If you take all your clothes, you’ll find out that you only wear 20 percent of them. Take what you have and don’t use and circulate it. Give stuff to people who truly need it. After all, we come into this world with nothing; we leave this world with nothing.

Learning about climate change triggered my depression in the first place. But it was also what got me out of my depression, because there were things I could do to improve the situation. I don’t have time to be depressed anymore.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

Since I was 16, I’ve felt a black cloud hangs over me. Since then, I have taken pills for depression.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point.

He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow, for the root of all grief is attachment. Thus one should discard attachment to be happy.

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends.

What’s done can’t be undone.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

Me and my dad are friends. We’re cool. I’ll never be disappointed again, because I don’t expect anything anymore from him. I just let him exist, and that’s how we get along.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

I have a little bit of PTSD when I hear a big bang or a loud noise or keys – I jump out of my skin.

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren’t worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.

She would have thrived as a grandmother. I know how much she would have contributed to their lives, and I am sad they will miss out on that.

I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it’s like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

Lord Jesus, we come just as we are; this is how we came at first, and this is how we come still, with all our failures, with all our transgressions, with all and everything that is what it ought not to be, we come to Thee.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

We need to, you know, restore people. We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.

I guess maybe when you get past 70, other people start asking you how you feel.

Some people have a hard time getting rid of stuff. If that’s you, pray for God to give you the courage to get rid of things you don’t really need or things He wants you to give away. This will help keep your surroundings organized and clutter-free.

I hate to see anybody sink. I hate to see anybody lose their dream, lose their home, something like that.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.