My mom and dad passed away from cancer. Within nine months, I lost both of my folks. Immediately after that, I had a horrible betrayal where my brother, who worked for me, stole a lot of my money. He's in jail now.
My heroes always are mostly my parents - my father especially, and my mom, who's passed on already. My dad is a very strong man, and by him being educated, and a principal and school superintendent over 37 years, he plays such a big role in my life.
Both my mum and dad were great readers, and we would go every Saturday morning to the library, and my sister and I had a library card when we could pass off something as a signature, and all of us would come with an armful of books.
I had a dream that my dad passed away and that Jesus came into the room and he was basically knocking on my door, saying, 'Hey, you need to find out more about me.' So that Sunday morning I ended up going to church, and that's when I got saved.
I ended up getting drafted by the Colorado Rockies on June 8, 2010 and the next day, my dad passed away, in June 9, 2010. So I'm at the biggest high of my life on June 8th. And the next day, June 9th, he's gone.
Death is with you all the time; you get deeper in it as you move towards it, but it's not unfamiliar to you. It's always been there, so what becomes unfamiliar to you when you pass away from the moment is really life.
In 1993, as House Democratic Leader, I led the fight to pass the Clinton-Gore economic plan - a plan designed to slash the deficit, invest in education, cut taxes for working families, and ask the wealthy among us to pay their fair share... Not one R...
Passover is my idea of a perfect holiday. Dear God, when you're handing out plagues of darkness, locusts, hail, boils, flies, lice, frogs, and cattle murrain, and turning the Nile to blood and smiting the firstborn, give me a pass. And tell me when i...
If we look to the saints, this great luminous wake with which God has passed through history, we truly see that here is a force for good that survives through millennia; here is truly light from light.
God drove Cain out of his presence and sent him into exile far away from his native land, so that he passed from a life of human kindness to one which was more akin to the rude existence of a wild beast.
Like I always say, it's not how many great plays you make; it's how few bad ones you make. I know fans, and even some losing coaches, are enamored with long pass completions or the great run plays, but that doesn't offset the interception or the fumb...
As I passed along the side walls of Westminster Abbey, I hardly saw any thing but marble monuments of great admirals, but which were all too much loaded with finery and ornaments, to make on me at least, the intended impression.
I don't want to be the flavor, the passing thing that the girls scream at. I think that it's more important for me, honestly, that the guy who gets dragged to the show, you know, looks at his wife and says, thank you, that was great and tells his bud...
At last, after completing year 12, I failed the great final examination, repeated the following year and failed again even more dismally than before. This was not an easy thing to do. My mates did the simple thing in the first place and mainly passed...
From early on there were two things that filled my life - music and storytelling, both of them provoked by my father. He was a jazz pianist and also a very good storyteller, an avid reader. He passed both those interests on to me.
When someone gets a success, and we, too, have done good work and sometimes even better work than the person who has just triumphed, we wonder: 'Why did success pass me by?'
I think I am a good running back, but I'm really not that fast. There is only one thing I can do, that is throw a cross-body block. Picture perfect. I love it. Not that good at pass blocking.
If you ever want to know why I'm not on a record label, look at 'The X Factor!' Honestly, of all the people that strive to break barriers in music and do good things and write great lyrics, not one of them would ever pass the first round on any of th...
Most people give Kennedy a passing grade, a good grade on the Cuban Missile Crisis handling, but what they don't realize, if he had had strength, if he had showed strength before, there would never have been a Cuban Missile Crisis.
I never was good at learning things. I did just enough work to pass. In my opinion it would have been wrong to do more than was just sufficient, so I worked as little as possible.
At 11, I passed the scholarship - only just; I wasn't very good at maths - to Ilford County High for Girls. When the Second World War started we were evacuated, first of all to Ipswich, and then to Aberdare, Queen of the Valleys, in south Wales.
