People have evolved into something selfish, greedy and intolerant. People are unaccepting, because of religion, race, gender, sexual orientation... I've seen it in punk clubs, and I've seen it in the world.
In Turkey, you're not allowed to be left alone in the hospital. The nurse teaches the family how to do things, and somebody is always there with the patient.
Not enough families eat together. We eat in front of the TV while we're absorbed in a program.
For faithful Catholics, communion is not just a nice ritual: It is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and the ultimate sign of our willingness to be incorporated into the church.
In the past, I've visited remote places - North Korea, Ethiopia, Easter Island - partly as a way to visit remote states of mind: remote parts of myself that I wouldn't ordinarily explore.
Combine a left-leaning upbringing with a family with direct experience of the Holocaust and someone with aspirations to write and I guess, sooner or later, that person will have a stab at writing something about the Holocaust.
I want to congratulate all the men out there who are working diligently to be good fathers whether they are stepfathers, or biological fathers or just spiritual fathers.
And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.
Neighbor is no longer confined to the vocabulary of the individual. It is a national word. Modern inventions have annihilated distance. Commercial relations have broken down barriers of race and religion, and the family of nations is a recognized fac...
I get a lot of letters, mostly from family members who have been affected by cancer rather than young people themselves. I reply to them all.
Deconstructing the concept of race not only conflicts with people's tendency to classify and build family histories according to common descent but also ignores the work of biologists studying non-human species.
For many of us, sport has provided the continuity in our lives, the alternative family to the one we left behind. It gives us something to talk about, to preen about, to care about.
We read that Adam and Methuselah lived so many centuries; at that time, it was the custom to marry in the family - marry as closely as possible - so that the tie of blood might be as strong as it could be made.
Cancer touches every family in one way or another. As other diseases are brought under control, cancer is set to become the number one killer, and is already in epidemic proportions worldwide.
I'm a professional cook. I've worked with other cooks from all over the world, but my family is not that way - they're always lived within 25 miles of my hometown!
That's the beauty of education, kids taking lessons out of the classroom and back into their own world where they can positively affect their family, their friends, and their greater community.
Death is really a great blessing for humanity, without it there could be no real progress. People who lived for ever would not only hamper and discourage the young, but they would themselves lack sufficient stimulus to be creative.
We fear death so profoundly, not because it means the end of our body, but because it means the end of our consciousness - better to be a spirit in Heaven than a zombie on Earth.
If Solomon counts the day of one's death better than the day of one's birth, there can be no objection why that also may not be reckoned amongst one's remarkable and happy days.
I think that much of this was running in background as I contemplated whether or not to attend the PS 99 reunion, although I certainly anticipated that I would not; it smelled like death, not youth.
Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath.
