“The things you don't know or understand are as important as your desire to know them. This is the relationship of man to mystery.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“It is everything that makes a man. It is everything that makes this man. And that is who I am alive, and that is who I am dead.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“I remember once kissing you, your face lit by northern stars. Promising to grow old with you, and now so simply breaking the promise.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“And I don't care what age you are, kissing in the rain is the best.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Becoming a man means doing the right thing even though it may be hard or difficult. Boys do what is easiest. A man does what is right, whether easy or not.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Remember, it’s still a mystery to be an adult. If you knew it all before eighteen, you’d have nothing to look forward to. Besides, to be wise and eighteen is as possible as catching lightning in a bottle…”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“You become a man when, in having children, you not only physically look after and protect them but also protect them with all the love and learning you have to give.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“POLITENESS must carry the true weight of SINCERITY and INTEGRITY for it to be a true act of POLITENESS.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“MUSIC. Tunneling right down into your CORE and SOULTIME. Hep, sloppy, SEXY and cerebral. Chancy and hip-swinging like ELVIS and your first teenage KISS.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“When do you become a man? When you become your own man. When other men trust you to do a man's work. Trust you with their name, their reputation, their thoughts. Trust you to watch their backs and trust you with their lives.”
“Summer, dropping so easily a delicious everything upon your skin and lips. Like a never-ending kiss—taunting, deep, and luscious. The sun. The heat. The thousand echoes of a timelessness before time, when every day seems longer than the next and no day seems likely to ever truly end. Summer.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Remember, Little Ones, everything is not important all the time. Only living is important all the time. Not things. Not money. Not more things and more endless money. Spend well the quality of your time. And yes, be greedy with your hours. If only to then give those hours away as the most precious gifts you have to offer to yourself, your family, and your friends.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Who will you be, my Little Ones? Will you dance for the fires of your youth and run at midnight to water’s edge, diving into summer’s heat? Will you ride a wild mare to any thought or dream or love of your making? Will you seek the artistry of your own infatuations and explore . . .”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Old is old at any age. Old is when you quit asking questions about this, that, and everything. Old is when you forget how to love-or worse, don't care. Old is when you don't want to dance anymore. Old is when you don't want to learn anything new except how to be old. Old is when people tell you that you are old-and you believe them.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Remember, life is too short to be spent dancing with idiots.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Rain with an umbrella while holding hands with your lover is damned sure nice.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“You know there's got to be a better way of life - somewhere, sometime, somehow - but you're not exactly sure what better is.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Time. Either you're for it or against it. So be here now. Not later.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Start with a brand new good-morning. To your husband or your wife. To your kids. To those you work with - and don't work with. What's the harm? How difficult is it? And it isn't, and you know it. So do it.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“There are hard days to live. You awake to a day when you feel you've done it all before, and you're going to do it again, so why do it at all.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“It is you who must someday break through the protective polish of who you are, to become naked and powerful to who you can truly be.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Reading teaches us the nuances of humanity. To find the beauty of what is moral and ethical in your own actions and discover the strange subtlety of what it is to question why you should exist.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Only you can know the difference between your wants and your needs, and your sacrifice of your life's time to both.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“All you have to do to quickly become OLD is to slowly GIVE UP being ALIVE.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“There are more things I don't even know by HALF than I do know by WHOLE.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“There are hard days to live. And sometimes they will be just a few, and sometimes they will seem endless. And eventually you'll come to understand that we've all been there before - or more than likely are going there now. And maybe that idea will make it easier for you, and maybe it won't. But there will still be hard days to live, and you will still have to find your way through them.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“If You Don't Believe the Numbers and Believe in Your Spirit, then You're Ageless.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“It's through traveling you make the great journey into yourself, and it's the clarity of extremes in traveling that forces you to meet yourself like you've never met yourself before.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“And Sometimes I Feel as if I'm Only a Doorman Awaiting the Arrival of her Royal Majesty.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“I wish I could wrap up the glitter star-green of this moment and hand it to you like an angel gift. Give you the heat lightning flying in jagged silence over the distant mountains. And the smell of September prairie grass and the even fainter scent of October pine now descending . . .”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Spring is a time to make up a big bouquet of flowers for someone you love, or are trying to love, or are in love with.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“I travel because I become uncomfortable being too comfortable.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“I promise to dream with you both great dreams and small dreams. To ask your counsel in times of uncertainty. To honor your silence when you seek to be alone. To be ever wondrous at your curiosities and revelations. And to be ever rejuvenated by your passions . . .”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“I gather the last remnants of the evening’s breeze, so cool and lazy within my arms, feeling it curl up like a small and innocent kitten.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Sometimes we make being happy so difficult. And being thankful such a chore.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Thanksgiving - fall's finale. Best damn holiday of the year in my worldly estimation.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Take off my clothes and there becomes a man. Take off my skin and there becomes my bones. Break all my bones and there becomes my heart. Smash my heart and there becomes my soul. And that you cannot take.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Sometimes I travel just to be overwhelmed – for it’s good every now and then to be overwhelmed.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“As I see it, you GET married - but you MAKE a marriage.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Time. Either you are for it or against it. So be here now. Not later.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“I travel for the jolting, angelic act of seeking strangeness and newness and profoundness.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Starting the day—Another chance to be new again. How many of us still wish for that? To be your own sunrise. To awaken like a prayer—both solemn and joyful at still being alive . . .”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“I travel to be replenished with beauty, for travel makes the beauty of this world seem like a Christmas that never ends. I travel for the jolting, angelic act of seeking strangeness and newness and profoundness . . .”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“So How Much of a THING or THINGS is Enough? And if you have EVERYTHING, have you achieved perfect HAPPINESS?”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“I travel because it makes me realize how much I haven't seen, how much I'm not going to see, and how much I still need to see.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“I travel because life is short, and I will not wait for fear of death or sanctuary to become a prison of my own making.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“It’s a fool who thinks having a kid is a right, which is the biggest crock of fish heads I’ve ever heard.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“There's so much to learn. So much to enjoy. So terribly much to be curious about. Take your life and run with it. Make a habit of being alive. This much of anything, I have learned. And am still learning.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“If you don’t know how to grow old, don’t start learning how to grow old.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Wake up. Be thankful. For whatever happens on this day, you are endlessly given the chance to start again-to be alive. And all of us should wish for that.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift