I. ON CHILDREN

• 1. "Have children if you can, as many as you can, and if you can be with them. Having children is, in many ways, the greatest gift you can give humanity because children are hope and love incarnate and are as close to unconditional love as you’ll see in this reality. Oh, and they’re a lot of fun."
• 2. "Don’t try to control who your children are. Let them emerge."
• 3. "Play with your kids—video games, board games, drawing, throwing footballs, or soccer in an alley—it doesn’t matter how good they are or you are. Play—that’s what they’re going to remember."

II. GENERAL

• 1. "God is necessary. Open your will to God and everything changes, but it is a subjective experience."
• 2. "Don’t try to change people."
• 3. "Regret is a waste of time and is toxic."
• 4. "If your life story isn’t aiding you, enabling you into a better future, change that story!"
• 5. "Rejoice! Don’t save failure from success (Think the fat base runner in Moneyball). You hit the homerun—run the damn bases, and don’t be afraid. If you win a record twenty games, rejoice and take that job in Boston. If you raise your family and they’re not axe-murderers and you have a great relationship with them, rejoice. If your belly is full, your body is warm, and your legs can move you, rejoice! If you can drink a nice hot cup of coffee, rejoice! If you have someone to share it with, rejoice more!"
• 6. "Inside of suffering (and this was a late discovery for me) is holiness. God lives there; there’s beauty in embracing it. This is the meaning of the Cross. Do not wallow—keep moving, however slowly. Keep the loss and sorrow with you, for that is what ties you to all of humanity. The children I see in my photos, my kids, are gone. They’re alive, but those beings have been taken by time. I look at my youth, and I am gone. I embrace this sadness every day now as a holy relic; my mortal shell decays, leaving only that which lives forever."