More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
What would you write if you had to write your obituary? Today, right now. What comes to mind? What memories, days, moments? What people and experiences?
“You know who cares when you die?” he asked to the bustling street. “Almost no one. Your spouse. Your kids. Your best friend. The rest? After about two weeks … hell … a few days … and you know what they’re talking about? The new truffle-and-mushroom frozen pizza at Trader Joe’s. Which is fucking delicious, by the way.
No winter. Sunny every day.” “How awful. Nice to visit. But I like weather. I like being inside on a rainy day, making a cup of tea, listening to the radio. I like the cold, the snow. What’s more magical than snow? When I taught at PS 29, the children would run to the window, stare at it, as if it was magic.
My gosh, what a looker.” “A looker? How old are you, eighty-five?”
If Cary Grant had used a wheelchair, he would have been Tim Charvat.
Because to really listen is to feel it, isn’t it?
Learning about dying taught him how to live.”
an anagram of funeral is real fun.”
“Feelings are hard,” she said, “especially as we get older. We learn to read, we learn to write, we learn how to drive a car. But we never really learn how to deal with our feelings, unless our parents taught us or we figured it out.
“We learn science and chemistry and Shakespeare and history,” he said. “But no intro to death. Isn’t that strange?”
It isn’t about death. It’s about the privilege of being alive.
‘There are three secrets to a happy life. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’
The mention of her father taking her away for a moment.
“Because I’m a didactic douche sometimes. So much so that I just used the word didactic, which is such an annoying word. Sometimes I hear my own voice and I hate it,” he said.
“So … if I overstep, if I give advice and sound like I know what I’m talking about, it’s because you matter to me. That’s all. I have a hard time seeing the people I love unhappy.”
you knew him and isn’t that better than never knowing him even though he’s dead now?”
