Will Schwalbe Quotes & Sayings

And my first item on each day's list is this: Wake up. If I can check that off, I've already done something and can get on with the business of living and trying to honor the memory of those I love who are no longer here. — Will Schwalbe

1. Ask: "Do you want to talk about how you're feeling?" 2. Don't ask if there's anything you can do. Suggest things, or if it's not intrusive, just do them. 3. You don't have to talk all the time. Sometimes just being there is enough. The — Will Schwalbe

One of the things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. Sure, sometimes they'll elude you by hiding in improbable places: in a box full of old picture frames, say, or in the laundry basket, wrapped in a sweatshirt. But at other times they'll confront you, and you'll literally stumble over some tomes you hadn't thought about in weeks or years. I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me. The may make me feel, but I can't' feel them. They are all soul with no flesh, no texture and no weight. They can get in your head but can't whack you upside it. — Will Schwalbe

Books have played a role in almost every one of the world's great civil and human rights movements, but only because people who read them decided to act. Reading brings with it responsibility. — Will Schwalbe

There's never a good excuse for not doing anything - — Will Schwalbe

book called The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, — Will Schwalbe

Reading isn't the opposite of doing, it's the opposite of dying. — Will Schwalbe

And there's something you can always tell people who want to learn more about the world and who don't know how to find a cause to support. You can always tell them to read. — Will Schwalbe

The apartment is an oasis - of civility, kindness, and elegance. — Will Schwalbe

Everyone doesn't have to do everything," she told me. "People forget you can also express yourself by what you choose to admire and support. I've had so much pleasure from beautiful and challenging things created by other people, things I could never make or do. I wouldn't trade that for anything. — Will Schwalbe

I flipped open to read the marked passage in Daily Strength: "It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well the tools we have. What we are, and where we are, is God's providential arrangement - God's doing, though it may be man's misdoing; and the manly and the wise way is to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made out of them." - F. W. Robertson — Will Schwalbe

But people can be cruel in lots of ways, some very subtle. — Will Schwalbe

The thank-you thing had been drummed into us intensely when we were growing up. We had three great-aunts, on my mother's side, who believed that when they dropped a present in the mail, your thank-you note should essentially bounce right back out of the mailbox at them. If it didn't, the whole family, cousins and second cousins and all, knew about your lack of gratitude (and, come to think of it, common sense, as the threat was always that no more presents would be forthcoming, ever), and you heard about it from multiple sources. The notes couldn't be perfunctory, either - you had to put real elbow grease into them, writing something specific and convincing about each gift. So Christmas afternoon meant laboring over thank-you notes. As children, we hated this task, but when I saw Mom beam as she thanked people in the hospital, I realized something she had been trying to tell us all along. That there's great joy in thanking. — Will Schwalbe

When I think back on all the refugee camps I visited, all over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter
they wanted books for their children. (quoting his mother) — Will Schwalbe

What I suddenly understood was that a thank-you note isn't the price you pay for receiving a gift, as so many children think it is, a kind of minimum tribute or toll, but an opportunity to count your blessings. And 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. — Will Schwalbe

Mom taught me not to look away from the worst but to believe that we can all do better. She never wavered in her conviction that books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose - electronic (even though that wasn't for her) or printed, or audio - is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in human conversation. Mom taught me that you can make a difference in the world and that books really do matter: they're how we know what we need to do in life, and how we tell others. Mom also showed me, over the course of two years and dozens of books and hundreds of hours in hospitals, that books can be how we get closer to each other, and stay close, even in the case of a mother and son who were very close to begin with, and even after one of them has died. — Will Schwalbe

Lahiri's characters, just like people all around us, are constantly telling each other important things, but not necessarily in words. — Will Schwalbe

The Uncommon Reader, a novella by Alan Bennett — Will Schwalbe

Trust is all about instinct. If you had all the facts, you wouldn't need trust. Trust is what is required in the absence of proof. But I believe you can strengthen your instincts by testing them; every time you prove yourself right or wrong, they grow stronger. — Will Schwalbe

Mom would often talk about a refugee boy she'd met in a hospital in Afghanistan. He was the victim of a land mine and had lost a leg. She said to him that she brought greetings to him from schoolchildren in New York. "Tell them not to worry about me," this little boy told her from his hospital bed. "I still have one leg. — Will Schwalbe

Why didn't this one say this, or tell someone that, or let anyone know she or he was so unhappy, so lonely, so scared? Lahiri's characters, just like people all around us, are constantly telling each other important things, but not necessarily in words. WHEN — Will Schwalbe

If you stayed at home, you might not get the opportunity to go to that place again. But if you went, you could always com back. — Will Schwalbe

Yes," Mom said. "People may want to kill themselves. But no one wants to be depressed, or in pain, or lonely, or hurt. — Will Schwalbe

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. — Will Schwalbe

But it takes so little to help people, and people really do help each other, even people with very little themselves. And it's not just about second chances. Most people deserve an endless number of chances. — Will Schwalbe

I often forget that other people's stories aren't simply introductions to my own more engaging, more dramatic, more relevant, and better-told tales, but rather ends in themselves, tales I can learn from or repeat or dissect or savor. — Will Schwalbe

Good books often answer questions you didn't even know you wanted to ask. — Will Schwalbe

There was one sure way to avoid being assigned an impromptu chore in our house - be it taking out the trash or cleaning your room - and that was to have your face buried in a book. Like churches during the Middle Ages, books conferred instant sanctuary. Once you entered one, you couldn't be disturbed. They didn't give you immunity from prosecution if you'd done something wrong - just a temporary reprieve. But we quickly learned you had to both look and be completely engrossed - just flipping pages didn't count. — Will Schwalbe

SThat's enriched my life more than I can say. Of course you could do more - you can always do more, and you should do more - but still, the important thing is to do what you can, whenever you can. — Will Schwalbe

What are you reading? isn't a simple question when asked with genuine curiosity; it's really a way of asking, Who are you now and who are you becoming? — Will Schwalbe

You can only do what you can, and what doesn't get done, just doesn't get done. — Will Schwalbe

For this day only is ours, we are dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow. — Will Schwalbe

It's a Buddhist meditation that Teza uses to calm his mind, to put aside not just the physical pain but the sadness and rage he's feeling: He starts to whisper a prayer. "Whatever beings there are, may they be free from suffering. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from enmity. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from hurtfulness. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from ill health. Whatever beings there are, may they be able to protect their own happiness." "I particularly like that last phrase," Mom said. "About protecting your own happiness." "But how can you protect your own happiness when you can't control the beatings?" I asked. "That's the point, Will. You can't control the beatings. But maybe you can have some control over your happiness. As long as he can, well then, he still has something worth living for. And when he's no longer able, he knows he's done all he can." In my mind, I replaced the word beatings with cancer. — Will Schwalbe

Connelly writes, "As long as there is paper, people will write, secretly, in small rooms, in the hidden chambers of their minds, just as people whisper the words they're forbidden to speak aloud." In — Will Schwalbe

One of the many things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence ... I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me. They may make me feel, but I can't feel them. They are all soul with no flesh, no texture, and no weight. — Will Schwalbe

Throughout her life, whenever Mom was sad or confuse or disoriented, she could never concentrate on television, she said, but always sought refuge in a book. Books focused her mind, calmed her, took her outside of herself; television jangled her nerves. — Will Schwalbe

MOM LIKED THE Ritalin. And she found it had a terrific and unexpected side effect - it helped her read. The day she first tried it, she was tired and uncomfortable and having trouble concentrating. She popped the Ritalin right before she sat down with Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, a fifteen-hundred-page book that she'd been attempting to read after a friend gave it to her. — Will Schwalbe

If I'd waited until I was well rested to read, I never would have read anything. — Will Schwalbe

Oh, dear
did I forget to mention that you can, indeed, have it all, but you need a lot of help! — Will Schwalbe

Of course you could do more - you can always do more, and you should do more - but still, the important things is to do what you can, whenever you can. You just do your best, and that's all you can do. Too many people use the excuse that they don't think they can do enough, so they decide they don't have to to do anything. There's never a good excuse for not doing anything - even if it's just to sign something, or send a small contribution, or invite a newly settled refugee family over for Thanksgiving. — Will Schwalbe

asked: "And I was very surprised by the ending. Were you?" "Of course not - I'd read it first. I don't think I could have stood the suspense if I hadn't known what was going to happen. I'd have been way too worried. — Will Schwalbe

Lin Yutang also believed that reading is an art. One chapter of the Importance of Living is devoted to "the Art of Reading." Lin writes that, "the man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighborhood. — Will Schwalbe

I like books. I don't read them. But I like them. — Will Schwalbe

I can't see giving up real books," she said. "And I love that I can give away my books after I've read them. Think of the first edition of The Magic Mountain I'm giving Nico. It was printed along with the first copy that went to Mann himself. It's got a history. — Will Schwalbe

Why did I always need to do something, like referring one person to another, just for the sake of doing something, when sometimes, perhaps, it was better to do nothing? — Will Schwalbe

I needed to remind myself that good news and bad news are often relative to your expectations, not anything absolute. — Will Schwalbe

You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them. I don't think I'll ever get over Melanie's death in Gone With the Wind. But I'm still so glad I got to know her. — Will Schwalbe

Mom's reaction to this chaos isn't a surprise. No matter how high the bill that she is paying or that Medicare is paying for her, she will say to me or herself: "What happens to all the people who can't afford this? It's just not fair." Universal — Will Schwalbe

We would also have to say goodbye to the joy of watching this next generation soak up the massive quantities of love their grandmother would have given them, and seeing them learn that there was someone in the world who loved them as much as their parents did: a grandmother who was delighted by all their quirks and who thought they were the most amazing creatures on earth. — Will Schwalbe

Mindfulness - it isn't a trick or a gimmick. It's being present in the moment. When I'm with you, I'm with you. Right now. That's all. No more and no less. — Will Schwalbe

In December 2008, I had the book with me while we waited for Dr. O'Reilly. Mom had already finished it. Every time I put the book down to go grab some mocha, or check my email, or make a call, I returned to find Mom rereading it, sneakily wolfing down passages as though I'd left behind a bag of cookies, not a book, and she was scooping up crumbs behind my back. — Will Schwalbe

Evil almost always starts with small cruelties. — Will Schwalbe

That there's great joy in thanking. — Will Schwalbe

Books provided much-needed ballast - something we both craved, amid the chaos and upheaval ... — Will Schwalbe

I'm talking about those novels where the characters aren't really interesting and you don't care about them or anything they care about. It's those books I won't read anymore. There's too much else to read
books about people and things that matter, books about life and death. — Will Schwalbe

Books had always been a way for my mother and me to introduce and explore topics that concerned us but made us uneasy, and they had also always given us something to talk about when we were stressed or anxious. — Will Schwalbe

She felt whatever emotions she felt, but feeling was never a useful substitute for doing, and she never let the former get in the way of the latter. If anything, she used her emotions to motivate her and help her concentrate. The emphasis for her was always on doing what needed to be done. — Will Schwalbe

Books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose - electronic (even though that wasn't for her) or printed, or audio - is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in human conversation. — Will Schwalbe

Also, how could anyone who loves books not love a book that is itself so in love with books? — Will Schwalbe

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. — Will Schwalbe

It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well the tools we have. What we are, and where we are is God's providential arrangement - God's doing, though it may be man's misdoing; and the manly and the wise way is to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made our of them. — Will Schwalbe

All over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter - they wanted books for their children. — Will Schwalbe

The day's passage was by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It read: That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness, and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. Shall not the heart which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives? May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will be worthy of the past? — Will Schwalbe

I particularly like that last phrase," Mom said. "About protecting your own happiness. — Will Schwalbe

Loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern world, so full of freedom, independence and our own egotistical selves. — Will Schwalbe

It was the women of afghanistan,my mother believed,who-once they'd been granted access to books and education- would be the salvation of the country — Will Schwalbe

did manage to read some pages from a book that's also about how people can find strength they didn't know they had." "What book was that?" "The Book of Common Prayer," Mom answered. "Didion?" "No, Will." Mom's voice was somewhere between amused and exasperated. "The other one." And then she added, smiling: "Besides, I think the Didion is A Book of Common Prayer, not 'The Book.' — Will Schwalbe

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 end up reading anything and everything else. (Sky Mall! Golf Digest!) — Will Schwalbe

The idea is that if you practice the Naikan part of Constructive Living, life becomes a series of small miracles, and you may start to notice everything that goes right in a typical life and not the few things that go wrong. — Will Schwalbe

The truth is that people never realize their lives are about to change in unforeseen ways
that's just the nature of unforeseen ways. — Will Schwalbe

In Gilead, the narrator's friend's son describes himself not as an atheist but in "state of categorical unbelief." He says, "I don't even believe God doesn't exist, if you see what I mean." I pointed this passage out to Mom and said it closely matched my own views
I just didn't think about religion. — Will Schwalbe

Books speak to us thoughtfully, one at a time. They demand our attention. And they demand that we briefly put aside our own beliefs and prejudices and listen to someone else's. There's one questions I think we should ask one another a lot more often, and that's "what are you reading? — Will Schwalbe

Often we feel the need to say that a book isn't just about a particular time or place but is about the human spirit. People say this of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, or Night by Elie Wiesel, or A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. — Will Schwalbe

I think women should have choices and should be able to do what they like, and I think it's a great choice to stay at home and raise kids, just as it's a great choice to have a career. But I don't entirely approve of people who get advanced degrees and then decide to stay at home. I think if society gives you the gift of one of those educations and you take a spot in a very competitive institution, then you should do something with that education to help others ... But I also don't approve of working parents who look down on stay-at-home mothers and think they smother their children. Working parents are every bit as capable of spoiling children as ones who don't work - maybe even more so when they indulge their kids out of guilt. The best think anyone can teach their children is the obligation we all have toward each other - and no one has a monopoly on teaching that. — Will Schwalbe

You should tell your family every day that you love them. And make sure they know that you're proud of them too. — Will Schwalbe

It's not that I liked lunacy for the sake of lunacy, but if a writer can truly surprise me without throwing logic completely out the window, then that writer has me for good. Most book surprises aren't surprising at all but follow a formula, like the dead body that's certain to lurch out of a wreck being explored by deep-sea divers in just about every book that involves wrecks and divers. — Will Schwalbe

If our family was an airline, Mom was the hub and we were the spokes. You rarely went anywhere nonstop; you went via Mom, who directed the traffic flow and determined the priorities: which family member was cleared for takeoff or landing. Even my father was not immune to Mom's scheduling, though he was given more leeway than the rest of us. — Will Schwalbe

How does a doctor tell you that it's over, that there are things they could do but probably shouldn't, and that if your aim is quality of life and not quantity of life, there simply are no good next treatments? — Will Schwalbe

But it's one thing to feel that a book can speak beyond its particular time and place to something universal, and another to ignore the circumstances and time in or about which it was written. — Will Schwalbe

But mostly, when I look back, what I remember is not Mom rushing about; it's Mom sitting quietly in the center of the house, in the living room, under the swirling colors of a Paul Jenkins painting; there would be a fire in the fireplace and a throw over her lap, her hands sticking out to hold a book. And we all wanted to be there with her and Dad, reading quietly too. — Will Schwalbe

We're all in the end-of-your-life book-club, whether we acknowledge it or not; each book we read may well be the last, each conversation the final one. — Will Schwalbe

joy is a product not of whether characters live or die but of what they've realized and achieved, or how they are remembered. — Will Schwalbe

No one in the family has ever really gotten over Bob's death. We talk of him daily, recounting stories and imagining what his reactions would be to new books and recent events. He remains for my family the perfect model of how you can be gone but ever present in the lives of people who loved you, in the same way that your favorite books stay with you for your entire life, no matter how long it's been since you turned the last page. — Will Schwalbe

Reading and naps, two of life's greatest pleasures, go especially well together. — Will Schwalbe

How great, I thought, to honor people while they are still alive. — Will Schwalbe

We've reached a point in American history when death has become almost the last obscenity. Have you noticed how many of us refuse to say 'he or she died'? We're far more likely to say 'she passed away,' as though death were a sterile process of modest preparation, followed by shrink-wrapping, then rapid transit - where? Well, elsewhere. In short, it's the single thing we're loath to discuss in public. — Will Schwalbe

Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. — Will Schwalbe

I read to live. I read for life. — Will Schwalbe

That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we can all talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves. — Will Schwalbe

I will never be able to read my mothers favourite books without thinking of her - an when I pass them on or 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 loved and do their own version of what she did in the world. — Will Schwalbe

Kabat-Zinn writes, "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." OBAMA — Will Schwalbe

He was the smartest and best-read person any of us had every known, but he wore his learning so lightly and had such curiosity about other people that he had the ability to make everyone around him feel smart and well-read. — Will Schwalbe

The thing about Americans," she said, "is that you're very concerned about everything all the time. — Will Schwalbe

We all owe everyone for everything that happens in our lives. But it's not owing like a debt to one person
it's really that we owe everyone for everything. Our whole lives can change in an instant
so each person that keeps that from happening, no matter how small a role they play, is also responsible for all of it. Just by giving friendship and love, you keep the people around you from giving up
and each expression of friendship or love may be the one that makes all the difference. — Will Schwalbe

We all have a lot more to read than we can read and a lot more to do than we can do. — Will Schwalbe

The Need to Read
"Reading books remains one of the best ways to engage with the world, become a better person and understand life's questions, big and small. — Will Schwalbe

Mom went on to tell me, as we sat there, that she really believed your personal life was personal. Secrets, she felt, rarely explained or excused anything in real life, or were even all that interesting. People shared too much, she said, not too little. She thought you should be able to keep your private life private for any reason or for no reason. — Will Schwalbe

I realized then that for all of us part of the process of mom's dying was mourning, not just her death, but also the death of our dreams of things to come. You don't really lose the person who has been. — Will Schwalbe

Felicia's Journey by the Irish short-story writer and novelist William Trevor. — Will Schwalbe

Mom was often asked to give speeches about why she felt so committed to the cause of refugees. She would say, "Just imagine that you are awakened tonight by someone in your family who says to you, 'Put the things you treasure most in one small bag that you can carry. And be ready in a few minutes. We have to leave our home and we will have to make it to the nearest border.' What mountains would you need to cross? How would you feel? How would you manage? Especially if across the border was a land where they didn't speak your language, where they didn't want you, where there was no work, and where you were confined to camps for months or years." And — Will Schwalbe