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.

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

I am just happy to be part of the Nike family.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.

I like being with my family. That’s my party.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

My ultimate life dream project is my kids. My family.

I love being American, and I love family. I love having a family, and I feel so blessed, and I feel like God gave me exactly what I wanted, so now I have to do the right thing in God’s eyes also. Just follow what God wants me to do.

Youth is wasted on the young.

It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don’t want victories anymore.

I think a father is important for everyone. If you don’t have, then maybe not so much. In the world today, it’s possible that you grow up with only one parent in the family.

My father used to wear the same pants for like a week.

I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family. We were a family that would have killed for each other – and we still are.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

I’ve been very lucky. I come from a very close family.

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

All that the future holds in store for each sacred child of God will be shaped by his or her parents, family, friends, and teachers. Thus, our faith now becomes part of our posterity’s faith later.

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.

I had a PET scan, and it was cleared. Not one cell of cancer after three rounds of chemo. But I still had seven more just for safety, which was stupid. I should have just worked on therapy.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

Politics has always been ugly to me, and yet I accept that as a fact of life.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

Going home helps the content.

My dad seemed comfortable with his decision to be a ‚have-not,‘ but I knew that I wasn’t.

My wife is already in Heaven.

Within one’s own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

When I die, I’m leaving my body to science fiction.

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

If you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England – you couldn’t have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things.

I sang a song at my sister’s wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.

You can’t move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn’t mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair, there is no hope.

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

A family shares hardships and a connected history.

When good Americans die they go to Paris.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

I’ve had no contact with my daughter for years. That’s her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don’t want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.