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I really just sat down to write. I mean, I did what most writers do when something happens that's overwhelming, fascinating, moving, all of that.
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Christopher Reeve understood that... everything begins with hope. His vision of walking again, his belief that he would be able to in his lifetime, towered over his broken body.
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I don't know why Alzheimer's was allowed to steal so much of my father before releasing him into the arms of death. But I know that at his last moment, when he opened his eyes, eyes that had not opened for many, many days, and looked at my mother, he showed us that neither disease nor death can conquer love.
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I'm not the angry, rebellious child that I was. You can remain a child for a long time. I certainly did. I was a slow learner.
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When I was a child, our summer days were spent swimming; chlorine in my hair was like perfume to me.
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I needed to run away in order to come home.
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I would not call myself a veteran conspiracy theorist. Or an obsessed one. I pretty much peaked on the whole conspiracy theory thing in the '60s, with the grassy knoll, who really killed JFK, and who ordered the hit on Lee Harvey Oswald.
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My father, for his part, was not a man to begrudge anyone a divergent opinion; he'd have been fine if I had written some articles disagreeing with his policies, or even given interviews, as long as I was respectful and civil.
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Even if the Bush Administration had flung open the gates to stem-cell research years ago, we would not be at the point of offering treatment today. Christopher Reeve would still have been taken from us. But we would be closer.
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It's a tender and complicated dance, watching our parents age. We become protective in ways we never were before, and we study them with a mix of sadness and curiosity: Is this what we will be like when we are their age? We tell ourselves to be patient - just answer the same question again as if it wasn't answered a moment ago.
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I had this odd sibling rivalry with America.
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There is a point in the grieving process when you can run away from memories or walk straight toward them.
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I think that my father would find it so confusing that people want to imitate him. Not because he didn't have confidence in who he was, but because he never imitated anybody. He was his own person.
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I often imagine what it would be like if my father were still here to mark his 100th birthday, if Alzheimer's hadn't clawed away years, possibilities, hopes. What would he think of all the commemorations and celebrations?
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I really just wanted to be a writer, but people tell you, 'You should have a backup career,' so I thought, 'OK, I'll act.' That was the foolishness of my vision for my life - that my backup career would be completely undependable.
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I certainly support anyone's prerogative to hire or not hire whomever they choose, and I definitely don't want to work for someone who doesn't want me.
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It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward.
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I grew up in this era where your parents' friends were all called aunt and uncle. And then I had an aunt and an aunt. We saw them on holidays and other times. We never talked about it, but I just understood that they were a couple.
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I can't even consider the prospect of grandchildren because I don't know if there will be anything left for them on Earth. That's how serious the problem is. We can't drink the water or breathe the air, and we're all dying from some sort of cancer. How many generations can sustain that? It frightens me terribly.
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It's one thing to show your love for someone when everything is going fine and life is smooth. But when the 'in sickness and in health' part kicks in and sickness does enter your lives, you're tested. Your resilience is tested.
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I don't think it's an accident who our parents are; I believe we choose them. So maybe I chose my parents in order to effect change.
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September 11 either made me love this country or it made me realize how much I already did. I think it's the latter. Seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11" made me think deeply about love of country - how it molds us, drives and emboldens us and how it can sometimes make us so angry, we want to shout out to the world: 'No, this is wrong.'
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Commerce is abusive. It's very hobbling to always be saying, 'Please let me put this out, this thing I've worked on for years.' It's like a nasty parent saying, 'No! Now go to your room.' As publishing companies got bigger, you felt even less significant.
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I was such a punk.