When death has you by the throat you don't mince words.

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection the past then lives in your words and you are free.

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.

My dad like many Southern men is this very emotionally expressive person who isn't as articulate in words about his feelings as he is with breaking a chair or something like that.

From time to time I'll look back through the personal journals I've scribbled in throughout my life the keepers of my raw thoughts and emotions. The words poured forth after my dad died when I went through a divorce and after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. There are so many what-ifs scribbled on those pages.

My first memory of the Rolling Stones is listening to 'Satisfaction' at a sixth-grade slumber party at a friend's house in Ankara Turkey where my family was living at the time. In the middle of our sleepover my friend's dad stopped the record when he heard the words 'girlie action!'

'Keep your head down at school.' Those are sage words from my dad. They kept me in check for years.

My dad taught me true words you have to use in every relationship. Yes baby.

Through the inspiration of Vaclav's words the courage of his dissidence and the integrity of his leadership Czechoslovakia successfully transitioned from an authoritarian state to a free democracy at the heart of Europe.