Elizabeth Edwards

Honestly, I get energized by the crowds. They feed me emotionally.

I have three living children for whom this is a father who I want them to love and on whom they're going to have to rely if my disease takes a bad turn.

You know, I once read a short story about how much you could tell about people from their shoes. You could tell where they had been, what they did, whether they were real walkers.

I think that we're foolhardy to not be engaging in federal funding of stem-cell research in the most aggressive way we possibly can.

You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces - my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined.

We were never a family that had a lot. We had enough, but not a lot.

I have a lot that I intend to do in this life.

There is nothing about resilience that I can say that my father did not first utter silently in eighteen years of living inside a two-dimensional cutout of himself.

A positive attitude is not going to save you. What it's going to do is, everyday, between now and the day you die, whether that's a short time from now or a long time from now, that every day, you're going to actually live.

I'm actually one of those people who get up energetic in the morning.

It's just a part of our nature to hope.

I want to live.

I've had to come to grips with a God that fits my own experience, which is, my God could not be offering protection and not have protected my boy.

You wouldn't know I was sick unless you knew I was sick.

My job as the mother of daughters is to make sure my children see that every opportunity is available to them.

I was a 16-year-old girl at one point, so of course I wrote poetry.

I don't know why someone else's marriage has anything to do with me.

What we hope to achieve is a society that doesn't value a white man because he's a white man, but also doesn't value a woman because she's a woman, or a black because he's a black.

I hope I have important things to say.

A lot of people have great hope, and a lot of people who have great hope live. And, some of them who have great hope die. So it's not that hope is going to save you.

I don't expect to get yesterday's medicine. If I can help it, I'd like to get tomorrow's medicine.

I have a husband who adores me.

I can't turn on the television without seeing me, or open the newspaper without seeing me and, honestly, I'm sick to death of me.

She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way (and it surely has not), she adjusted her sails.

You recognize a survivor when you see one. You recognize a fighter when you see one.

I've spent a lot of words on my own mortality.

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before.

Successful health reform must not just make health insurance affordable, affordable health insurance has to make health care affordable.

I want to reclaim who I am.

I'm not worried about me or what's going to happen to me.

I've often said that the most important thing you can give your children is wings. Because, you're not gonna always be able to bring food to the nest. You're... sometimes... they're gonna have to be able to fly by themselves.

I think self-knowledge is the rarest trait in a human being.

Almost everybody embraces life.

If people think that you're throwing babies out, dissecting children, to do stem-cell research, I'm not for that.

I've had experiences that, you know, really couldn't be replaced.

The worst thing to me would be that you put on the face you think people want to see, and then they don't like it and you think, Would they have liked the real me?

I have an obligation to try to live as long as I can for my family.

I'm a puzzle doer.

Every parent has gone through a period when their child wasn't so happy with them.

I could be wrong, but I think heterosexual marriage is threatened more by heterosexuals. I don't know why gay marriage challenges my marriage in any way.

Sometimes you get politicians who dig their feet into the sand and aren't willing to listen to another voice.

I took my son's name. I didn't take my husband's name.

It takes a lot of work to put together a marriage, to put together a family and a home.

I'm not just a cuckolded wife.

Brave people are the firemen who run into the burning building. That's brave.

In a sense, having cancer takes you by the shoulders and shakes you.

She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way she adjusted her sails.

I think being an effective First Lady is first of all being the partner that your husband needs.

Either you push forward with the things that you were doing yesterday or you start dying.

The way campaign funds are distributed are all a matter of record.

I grew up in a Navy family.

I'm completely comfortable with gay marriage.

You know, everybody knows some of what politicians say is malarkey, and having somebody there to call them on it is good. I'd be happy to do that any time and any place.

We're all going to die.

Tabloid news is tabloid news.

I think that it is our intention to deny cancer any control over us.

I do think voters do take into consideration - particularly early state voters - take into consideration a wide range of factors, including electability, and they know that part of electability is the total package that you're presenting.

Leave me if you must but be faithful to me if you are with me.

The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human.

Part of resilience is deciding to make yourself miserable over something that matters, or deciding to make yourself miserable over something that doesn't matter.

She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way and it surely has not, she adjusted her sails.

By what you do, you teach your children how to respond to difficult information.

Concentrate on the things that matter to you.

Cancer is not a straight line. It's up and down.

The military is already sexually integrated.

One of the things that I think you see sometimes in politics is a certain degree of caution. It's usually advised by consultants who don't want to see you march to the end of a limb.

What happened after Katrina is that people were stirred to action; there were an enormous number of contributions by people trying to make a difference. But then we forget. We've forgotten Katrina victims, we've forgotten the face of poverty.

You have to have enough respect for other human beings to leave their lives alone. If you admire that life, build it for yourself. Don't just try to come in and take somebody else's life.

I come out of real life.

I have less energy than I did when I was a younger parent, although I was never really a young parent.

I was an English major in college, and then I went to graduate school in English at the University of North Carolina for three years.

Everybody makes personal decisions that are right for them and if you're in political life, you're used to having those analyzed.

To be perfectly frank, there is an odd place after losing a child, where you think somehow your life is worth less.

You never know when something's going to hit you in a particular way and just knock you loose.

Maybe we all change over time.

But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.

Everybody has their burdens, their grief that they carry with them.

Whenever anyone pulls out of the race, you know, unless they've just been trounced in the days before, there's also - always a lot of questions about why that happened.

I think I did marry a marvelous man.

I'm a recovering lawyer. The practice of law has changed. Every agreement is a fight.

I am imperfect in a million ways, but I always thought I was the kind of woman, the kind of wife to whom a husband would be faithful.

I'm not praying for God to save me from cancer. I'm not. God will enlighten me when the time comes. And if I've done the right thing, I will be enlightened. And if I believe, I'll be saved. And that's all he promises me.