Natalie Babbitt

Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.

Like all magnificent things, it's very simple.

Everything's a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is

Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short. You got to take what comes.

You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road.

And suddenly, she longed for a thunderstorm.

But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing.