We hold in our hands, the most precious gift of all Freedom. The freedom to express our art. Our love. The freedom to be who we want to be. We are not going to give that freedom away and no one shall take it from us
A person has three choices in life. You can swim against the tide and get exhausted, or you can tread water and let the tide sweep you away, or you can swim with the tide, and let it take you where it wants you to go.
As a scientist, I am not sure anymore that life can be reduced to a class struggle, to dialectical materialism, or any set of formulas. Life is spontaneous and it is unpredictable, it is magical. I think that we have struggled so hard with the tangible that we have forgotten the intangible.
Death is the enemy. I spent 10 years of my life singlemindedly studying, practicing, fighting hand to hand in close quarters to defeat the enemy, to send him back bloodied and humble and I am not going to roll over and surrender.
Despite everything I've achieved in my life, the culinary awards, the military commendations, the honorary degrees, I have never, ever lost sight of what's truly important. The thing that gives meaning to these triumphs. Someone to share them with. A companion. A help mate. A wife.
I am going to concentrate on what's important in life. I'm going to strive everyday to be a kind and generous and loving person. I'm going to keep death right here, so that anytime I even think about getting angry at you or anybody else, I'll see death and I'll remember.
I feel like I can handle a lot of things. I can handle a parasitic infection and separating lesions, arterial sclerosis. But this stuff...I just want to go through life thinking people are happy, naive as that may sound.
I'm grateful to you. If it weren't for you, I'd be in Cicely right now and I'd still be running that rat race, still locked in that commute. I'd be totally stressed, I'd be totally ignorant of what my life could be. I'm happier now than I've ever been.
If you were in a burning house and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save The cat...you would save the cat, because the cat is alive. The art is dead. It's just paint on a canvas, ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life. It's just to destroy life.