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Kindle Notes & Highlights
There are certain books that I mean to read and keep stacked by my bedside. I even take them on trips. Some of my books should be awarded their own frequent-flier miles, they’ve traveled so much. I take these volumes on flight after flight with the best of intentions and then wind up reading anything and everything else
Reading isn’t the opposite of doing; it’s the opposite of dying. I will never be able to read my mother’s favorite books without thinking of her—and when I pass them on and recommend them, I’ll know that some of what made her goes with them; that some of my mother will live on in those readers, readers who may be inspired to love the way she loved and do their own version of what she did in the world.
“Just give two weeks’ notice, walk out the door, and figure out later what to do. If you’re lucky enough to be able to quit, then you should. Most people aren’t that fortunate.”
“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.”
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.
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.”
gratitude isn’t what you give in exchange for something; it’s what you feel when you are blessed—blessed to have family and friends who care about you, and who want to see you happy. Hence the joy from thanking.
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.
“In North America, a lot of kids take getting an education for granted. But when you’re from a poor country, you know what an education can do. It can open doors. You may not have hands, but you still have your mind.
joy is a product not of whether characters live or die but of what they’ve realized and achieved, or how they are remembered.
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.
New York is a place that inspires hypocrisy. When I’m walking, I curse the cabs that race through yellow lights, but I tip generously when I’m late and my driver does just that.
