This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun.

You're not a wave, you're a part of the ocean.

If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it's going to happen anyhow.

You have to work at creating your own culture.

This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun.

Love each other or die.

The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

You have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it.

People are only mean when they're threatened, and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does.

Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers.

For better or for worse, I've watched people die in front of me. I see how they are in the end. And they're not cynical. In the end, they wanna hold somebody's hand. And that's real to me.

For years I wrote in my basement. More recently I graduated to one floor above, an office with all my books and music and - ta da! - a window.

I believe that you live on inside the hearts and minds of everyone you've touched while you were here on earth.

I don't know about Heaven or Hell, but I do know that we are visited all the time by the spirits of those who affected us in life.

I had a very high-grade publisher tell me I was incapable of writing a memoir.

I used to be a classic workaholic, and after seeing how little work and career really mean when you reach the end of your life, I put a new emphasis on things I believe count more. These things include: family, friends, being part of a community, and appreciating the little joys of the average day.

I was a workaholic. I never stopped. I lived in fifth gear. I bought cars. I invested in stocks. I made more money than I had ever imagined.

I would lying if I said I would laugh in the face of death.

If you are fully alive to the prospect of dying, you really start reprioritising your life.

If you really could fit God in a file, you wouldn't need to believe in God, you know, you'd just go get the file like a box of corn flakes off the shelf.

In a newspaper, you only have so much room. It teaches you the value of getting to the point, of not pampering yourself with your glorious writing. I've always been much more interested in one powerful sentence that stays with you. That's my style.

Mortality means you don't have forever to work things out. You can live your life unexamined but then on the last day you're going to think: 'I've left things a little late.'

My own father didn't talk a lot about feelings or emotions.

Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?

People who don't normally read make an exception for my books, possibly because they're short.

Sentiment is wherever you go.

We all have two things in common, no matter who we are: We were born and we are going to die.

Accept who you are and revel in it.

Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.

Belief, hard work, love – you have those things, you can do anything.

Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.

When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this earth.

In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.

Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.

All endings are also beginnings. We just dont know it at the time.

Sometimes you have to do things when sad things happen.

People often belittle the place where they were born.

Desire sets our compass but real life steers our course.

You cant substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness and power is not a substitute for tenderness.

Mankind is connected in ways it does not understand even in dreams.

I love you every day. And now I will miss you every day.

But a desperate heart will seduce the mind.

Detachment doesnt mean you dont let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary you let it penetrate you fully. Thats how you are able to leave it.

Detroit is a place where weve had it pretty tough. But there is a generosity here and a well of kindness that goes deep.

What is false about hope

This is part of what a family is about not just love. Its knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth like pristine glass absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge others crack a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces beyond repair.

A funeral is no place for secrets.

If youre always battling against getting older youre always going to be unhappy because it will happen anyhow.