People From Omaha

"The past was gone and the future had yet to unfold, and he knew he should focus his life on the present...yet his day-to-day existence suddenly struck him as endless and unbearable."

"Thinking back, he recalled events he wished he could change, tears he wished had never been shed, time that could have been better spent, and frustrations he should have shrugged off. Life, it seemed, was full of regret, and he yearned to turn back the clock so he could live parts of his live over again. One thing was certain: He should have been a better husband."

"...the secret of a long lasting marriage is... ...communication. When we talk about issues and really open up to each other, things are great between us. When we keep things to ourselves, grudges and resentments build up and we end up arguing." ..."What good is talking if neither of you are really committed?...marriage comes down to actions. I think people talk too much about the things that bother them, instead of actually doing the little things that keep a marriage strong. You have to know what your spouse needs from you, and then you do it. And you avoid doing the things that harm the relationship. If your spouse acts the same way, your marriage can make it through anything."

"But would she do it differently if she could? She doubted it. Her experiences growing up ad formed her into the woman that she'd become, just as his experiences had formed him, and she didn't regret them. And yet...she knew that wasn't the question that mattered. ...she realized the choice before her was this: Where do I go from here? It is never too late to change things."

"There are ghosts and there is love, And both are present here, To those who listen, this tale will tell The truth of love and if it's near."

"...He was with the woman and daughters he loved, and who could ever need or want anything more than that?...It was just a normal day, a day like any other. But most of all, it was a day in which everything was exactly the way it should be."

"I don't want to be a grown-up. … Because grown-ups always say that things are complicated."

"Mitch...was the kind of man who added something to everything he touched and everyone he came in contact with. I was envious of his view on life. He saw it all as a big game, where the only way to win was to be good to other people, to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and like what you see."

"So many people these days, it seemed, believed that these things (personal fulfillment and self-esteem) could come only from work, not from parenting, and many people believed that having children had nothing to do with raising them."

"But trust me when I say that memories are funny things. Sometimes they're real, but other times they change into what we want them to be... But like I said, she's hurting, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that people in pain don't always see things as clearly as they should... And if it somehow doesn't work out between you, then you've got to understand that you can't look back anymore. It'll destroy you in the end, and destroy her as well. Neither one of you can keep living with regret, because it drains the life right out of you, and the very idea is enough to break my heart."

"Youth offers the promise of happiness, but life offers the realities of grief."

"Even now, not a day goes by when I don't wish I could turn back the clock and change what happened."

"Loving someone and having them love you back is the most precious thing in the world. It's what made it possible for me to go on..."

"...there'd also been an unvarnished honestly in what they'd said. There were no hidden meanings, no secret attempts to pass judgment; as quickly as their disagreements had flared up, they'd pass."

"My Dearest Catherine, I miss you, my darling, as I always do, but today is especially hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together."

"Deanna's voice softened. "Theresa, I know there's a part of you that believes you can change someone, but the reality is that you can't. You can change yourself, and Garrett can change himself, but you can't do it for him." "I know that--" "But you don't," Deanna said, gently cutting her off. "Or if you do, you don't want to see it that way. Your vision, as they say, has become clouded.""

"Oh, Garrett, who do you think it was that brought the bottle to her?"

"I lead a simple life now, I am foolish, an old man in love, a dreamer who dreams of nothing but reading to Allie and holding her whenever I can. I am a sinner with many faults and a man who believes in magic, but I am too old to change and too old to care."

"You have to understand that I'm not the girl I used to be. I'm a wife and a mother now, and like everyone else I'm not perfect. I struggle with the choices I've made and I make mistakes, and half the time I wonder who I really am or what I'm doing or whether my life means anything at all. I'm not special at all, Dawson, and you need to know that. You have to understand that I'm just...ordinary."

"I know we've had our differences, Allie, and that we haven't seen eye to eye on everything. I'm not perfect, but I did the best I could with raising you. I'm your mother and I always will be. That means I'll always love you." Allie was silent for a moment, then: "What should I do?" "I don't know, Allie. That's up to you. But I would think about it. Think about what you really want."

"I can't make this decision for you, Allie, this one's all yours. I want you to know, though, that I love you. And I always will. I know that doesn't help, but it's all I can do."

"It was...the most difficult walk anyone ever had to make. In every way, a walk to remember."

"...even then I knew that I was fortunate. Because you were the first guy who wasn't constantly trying to impress me. You accepted who you were, but more than that, you accepted me for me."

"...There is a greater purpose to all this. It is your destiny."

"Follow your heart,"

"Why? Do you want to rescue me, too, Taylor? … That's what you're trying to do, isn't it? … I appreciate what you're trying to do, but it's not what I need right now. I need to handle this my own way."

"Love, after all, always said more about those who felt it than it did about the ones they loved."

"Her mother had once told her that there were men who kept secrets bottled up inside and that it spelled trouble for the women who loved them."

"...he had the sense that they were both lonely, albeit in different ways. He was a solitary figure in a vast landscape while she was a face in a nameless crowd."

"In the end, everything came down to money. It came down to what a person actually did, as opposed to who they thought they were,..."

"It was a life, she eventually concluded, that had been lived in the middle ground, where contentment and love were found in the smallest details of people's lives. It was a life of dignity and honor, not without sorrows yet fulfilling in a way that few experiences ever were. She knew Tuck understood that more than anyone."

"Where does a story truly start? In life, there are seldom clear-cut beginnings, those moments when we can, in looking back, say that everything started. Yet these are moments when fate intersects with our daily lives, setting in motion a sequence of events whose outcome we could never have foreseen"

"The past was gone, after all, and the future was the only thing they had left."

"I can no more give Jamie away than I can give away my heart. But what I can do is let another share in the joy that she has always given me."

"...she was struck by the simple truth that sometimes the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people."

"You're doing the best you can, right? Isn't that what we always tell each other?"

"I am nothing special; of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough."

"...the grass isn't always greener on the other side. What the younger generation didn't understand was that the grass was greener where it's watered, which meant that both Frank and Amanda had to get out their hoses if they wanted to make things better."

"I threw the kitchen sink at him but he went to the bathroom and got his tub."

"You don’t have a lot of envy, you don’t have a lot of resentment. You don’t overspend your income, you stay cheerful in spite of your troubles, you deal with reliable people, and you do what you’re supposed to do. And all these simple rules work so well to make your life better. And they’re so trite."

"I don't think that she knows who Adam Smith was."

"... I regard it as a cinch that a great nation will in due time be Rome. ... Where is Rome? Where is Britain in its heyday? They all pass and so our turn is bound to come some day."

"What I would say is the single most important thing, if you want to avoid all the stupid errors, is knowing where you're competent and where you aren't. And that's very hard to do because the human mind naturally tries to make you think you're way smarter than you are."

"How do these super-smart people with all these degrees and higher mathematics end up doing these dumb things? I think it's explainable by the old proverb that to the man with a hammer every problem looks pretty much like a nail. They've learned these techniques and they just twist the problem so it fits the solution — which is not the way to do it."

"Neither Warren nor I have ever used any fancy math in business — and neither did Ben Graham who taught Warren. Everything I have ever done in business could be done with the simplest algebra and geometry and addition and multiplication and so forth. I never used calculus for any practical work in my whole damn life — and I was a perfect whiz at it when they taught it to me."

"You fix what can be fixed, and what can't be fixed you endure."

"I see [Bitcoin as] an artificial speculative medium that people are buying just because they think they can sell it to somebody else at a higher price, even though it inherently has no intrinsic value. So, I regard the whole business as anti-social, stupid, immoral. [...] I regard the thing as a combination of dementia and immorality, and I think the people that are pushing it are a disgrace."

"The hard part of the process for most people is the first $100,000. If you have a standing start at zero, getting together $100,000 is a long struggle for most people."

"You have to learn all the big ideas in the key disciplines in a way that they're in a mental latticework in your head and you automatically use them for the rest of your life. If you do that, I solemnly promise you that one day you'll be walking down the street and you'll look to your right and left and you’ll think "my heavenly days, I'm now one of the few competent people in my whole age cohort." If you don't do it, many of the brightest of you will live in the middle ranks or in the shallows."

"The first $100,000 is a bitch, but you gotta do it. I don’t care what you have to do — if it means walking everywhere and not eating anything that wasn’t purchased with a coupon, find a way to get your hands on $100,000. After that, you can ease off the gas a little bit."