My dad was diagnosed with cancer, so we ended up burying him a year to the day that he was diagnosed.
Personally, I'd have welcomed a dementor attack. A deadly struggle for my soul would have broken the monotony nicely.
To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.
He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
Get up, you useless lump, get up!
Read a lot. Reading really helps. Read anything you can get your hands on.
Why would you stick someone you love down in a lonely hole in the dirt? Where it's cold, and dirty, and full of bugs?
I discovered Los Angeles in the late 90s. The city was not at its best at the time, but I fell for it right away. There is something almost haunted about it, a vibrant mythology I find rather inspiring.
I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.
For me, the highlight was meeting all the Motown acts, as I adore black soul music. I met Stevie Wonder who I love, and Diana Ross And The Supremes. I also met The Carpenters. I was actually there in the studio when they recorded We've Only Just Begun.