He'd lived so long in anticipation of his own death that to contemplate his future was like standing at the edge of a cliff, staring into a vertiginous rush of open sky.

Learning to be a Life- Giving Mom without regrets requires embracing the season you are in. You have to let go of the past and live in the present as you lay hold of the future. At each transition you will likely shed some tears as you realize that you can’t go back and re-live the past. You must move forward, facing the imperfections of your present, hoping for the future.

I am not a man of my time. In fact I find it hard not to declare myself its enemy. Not, as I often remark, that I fail to understand it. My comment is merely a pious one. Because I am easy-going I prefer not to be aggressive or hostile and therefore I say that I do not understand those matters which I ought to say I hate or despise. I have sharp hears but I pretend to be hard of hearing, finding as I do that is more elegant to feign this handicap than to admit that I have heard some vulgar sound.

Life is a transition.

Life on earth is a transition.Death is final rest of every man.What legacy do you wish to live?

Transitional periods in life are unsettling because a person’s latent fears constantly whisper warnings.

We’re all given gifts in life, it’s what we do with them that shows us what we’ve learned.

I live in an ecotone. Employment must coexist with goofing off. Responsibility must coexist with irresponsibility.

Laura knew then that she was not a little girl any more. Now she was alone; she must take care of herself. When you must do that, then you do it and you are grown up. Laura was not very big, but she was almost thirteen years old, and no one was there to depend on. Pa and Jack had gone, and Ma needed help to take care of Mary and the little girls, and somehow to get them all safely to the west on a train.