Patti Davis Quotes

Of course, people say maybe there are some self-published books out there that shouldn't be out there. Well, it's the same with conventional publishing.

I needed to run away in order to come home.

Life Lesson 8: Change is always hard, but time softens the rough edges and eases the pull of the past. Eventually, we all climb out from under the bed, and even the most unfamiliar places begin to feel like home.

I did what most writers do when something happens that's overwhelming, fascinating, moving, all of that. I didn't know what else to do about it except write about it.

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.

The house I grew up in had large plate-glass windows, which birds frequently crashed into headfirst. My father helped me assemble a bird hospital, consisting of a few shoe boxes, some old rags, and tiny dishes for water and food.

Callista Gingrich has, I suspect, given Newt's advisers a giant headache. She's a constant presence at her husband's side - and a constant reminder of his acknowledged infidelity. Newt cheated on his second wife with Callista, a woman 23 years his junior.

I was such a punk.

And as far as false hope, there is no such thing. There is only hope or the absence of hope-nothing else.

Loss teaches you to figure things out as they come along.

The CIA created, armed and financed the Contras. My father backed them with everything he had. It was my father's war, and almost everyone in Nicaragua has lost somebody as a result of it. I couldn't go down there, being his daughter, and expect not to feel those people's wrath.

Texas governor Rick Perry's wife, Anita, has come out slugging in her glittering leopard-print jacket against what she sees as the unfair treatment of her husband. She tearfully said that he has been 'brutalized' for his faith.

The memories stayed with him for so long, and stayed vivid. And it didn't matter to me that he'd already repeated that before. I could hear it forever.

I knew people were independently publishing, and I buy books on Amazon. I began seriously considering it when Amanda Hocking was in the news about her self-publishing success.

Alzheimer's disease locks all the doors and exits. There is no reprieve, no escape.

Just think: people decided one day that a day should be set aside for motherhood and fatherhood. What a great concept that is.

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.

People love the way they're capable of loving-but that's not always how you want them to love or how you think they should love.

I felt that the best I could do for my father, and the best I could do for myself, and my mother and my family was to stay open to the experience, and learn whatever I could at every step of the way as it was going on.

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.

I have a feeling of reverence about my father being in his 80s - a feeling that I want to whisper, take soft steps, not intrude too much. He's like a stately old cathedral to me now.

My father would never have said about any of his children you shouldn't express your opinions. But it's the way in which you express them. And for me to do - to speak at demonstrations and be as strident as I was now I see wasn't right. And it - there was a better way to do it. I could have written articles.

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.

[On her father, Ronald Reagan:] How do you argue with someone who states that the people who are sleeping on the grates of the streets of America 'are homeless by choice'?

I thought the best thing that I could do would be to clean up my own act, in terms of whatever .. childhood wounds were left.

My father's body lies in a stone tomb high on a hill. People walk by, pause, think their own thoughts about him and move on, back to their own lives. I can never move on. He is everywhere.

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.

You know, if you hang around this earth long enough you really see how things come full circle.

America had taken my father from me. And over most of the years of his illness, I gradually started feeling this support system from this country who-people grieving along with us.

I'm very comfortable writing in the first person; it dives into the character in a way that's difficult if you're writing in the third person.

Politics isn't what defines a person, and it shouldn't define a relationship. I made the mistake of letting that intrude on my relationships.

There is a version of Alzheimer's which is early onset Alzheimer's. And it's - it's horrible, because people do get it in their 50s and 60s. And it's terrible.

After September 11, I got to understand a little bit of his deep love for this country.

I think we can work through a lot of political and international problems, but what really frightens me is what's happening environmentally.

It used to be a lot easier to get a book deal.

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.

The most ethical way to deal with an unethical situation would be to simply say: 'We did something wrong.' But nobody in a family like mine would ever respond like this.

To me, Ann Romney sounds like a better candidate than her husband. She put her MS into remission through horseback riding, alternative therapies, and a healthy diet. She knows how to pace herself. She has a sense of humor and an innate honesty, and her hair moves in the wind. Maybe she should run.

My father started growing very quiet as Alzheimer's started claiming more of him. The early stages of Alzheimer's are the hardest because that person is aware that they're losing awareness. And I think that that's why my father started growing more and more quiet.

You have to separate yourself from your parents. You do. In order to find yourself.

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.

I'm part of the tribe who have said goodbye to one parent and are feeling a sense of responsibility for the one who remains - in my case, my mother. How do I make her time smoother, happier? How do I try to ease her, a widow, away from the dark well of grief without dishonoring the necessity of that grief?

Decades later I would look into my father's eyes and try to reach past the murkiness of Alzheimer's with my words, my apology, hoping that in his heart he heard me and understood.

I think that nothing teaches you more about life than death and dying.

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.

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.