Regina Brett Quotes

The world isn't ending. You are just experiencing turbulence. The plane is safe. The pilot is good. You're in the right seat of life. You just hit a patch of bumpy air. Wait. It will pass.

I once heard someone say that prayer is more than words. It's a stance you take, a position you claim. You throw your body against the door to keep the demons from advancing and stay put until they go away.

Someone once told me the difference between a rut and a grave is this: a rut has a little more room to move around. When I find myself in a rut, I know I better get out fast before it becomes a grave.

God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.

If you're lucky enough to still have grandparents, visit them, cherish them and celebrate them while you can.

Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

No matter how I feel, I get up, dress up, and show up for life. When I do, the day always serves up more than I could have hoped for. Each day truly is a slice of heaven. Some days the slices are just smaller than others.

Cancer is a great wake-up call. A call to take the tag off the new lingerie and wear that black lacy slip. To open the box of pearls and put them on. To crack open the bath oil beads before they shrivel up in a bowl on the toilet tank.

He'd be the first to say God never gives us more than we were designed to carry. Some of us were designed for more, some for less. No matter what, even if we are asked to carry a portion of sky, it is beyond bearable. It is a gift.

My daughter had carried within her a story that kept hurting her: Her dad abandoned her. She started telling herself a new story. Her dad had done the best he could. He wasn't capable of giving more. It had nothing to do with her. She could no longer take it personally.

Over prepare, then go with the flow.

This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice in it and be glad.

We need to be smarter than our smart phones and realize the people we are with are more important than the people we aren't with, and way more important than the strangers we hope will tweet and like and share and Instagram whatever we're sending out into the cybersphere.

There's so much living to be squeeze into the cracks of one little day. You can make someone laugh, smile, hope, sing, think.

Sometimes you have to censor books. When I read 'Peter Rabbit,' I skip the part about Peter's father ending up in one of Mrs. McGregor's pies. I also hid the book of 'Grimm Fairy Tales.' They're just too grim for my grandkids. Reality will come soon enough.

If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.

Family is more than DNA, more than who we used to be, more than we can imagine we will become.

No one is in charge of your happiness except you.

To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I've ever written.

A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.

Lighten up. You're too intense. Don't take yourself so seriously.

It takes courage to sit on a jury. How many of us want to decide the fate of another person's life or freedom? How many of us want to hold that kind of power in our hands?

Almost every month, I have a day where I get stuck in the mud of me. I used to blame hormones and PMS. After I hit 50, I blamed the lack of hormones. But men get stuck, too, so it must simply be the human condition.

Rewiring your thoughts won't get rid of the holes in your life, but it can prevent you from falling in them.

When you finally let go of the person you used to be, you get to discover the person you are now and the person you want to become.

Even if you have nothing in your wallet, nothing can keep you from having a great summer. You can listen to crickets sing you to sleep, trace the Big Dipper, breathe in the stars, run through a sprinkler, host a cartwheel contest in the front yard.

God never gives us more than what we can carry.

Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.

If no one shopped on Thanksgiving Day, the stores wouldn't open. End of story. I say we all take the pledge and stay home. Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks for what you have, not to save a few dollars to get more.

For years I heeded the warning: Do monthly breast self-exams. Like most women, I did them on a 'sort of' basis. Every few months I'd sort of do a quick feel, but never as thoroughly as the doctors urged. I didn't want to go looking for trouble. If you look for it, you might find it. Looking for cancer is unsettling. Thank God I looked.

We are all afraid of making the mistake that will ruin our lives. There's probably no such thing. Even if we made every mistake we feared would ruin us, our lives wouldn't be ruined. They would be changed.

However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

Look, at the end of it all, God us going to ask just one question: Did you love? Eh? That's all that matters. Did you love.

Wouldn't it be great if health-care plans included a list of Buddhist monks among the network providers?

From now on, I pray like I mean it. No more hitting SEND over and over. It's changed my life. It has freed me from fear and opened up endless avenues for me as a writer, radio host, parent, wife, and friend. It has enhanced every relationship I'm in, starting with the most important one: my relationship with God. Real faith isn't praying without ceasing. It's believing that God heard you the first time.

Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

In real life, the dots aren't numbered.

I usually give a book 40 pages. If it doesn't grab me by then, adios. With young adult books, you can usually tell by Page 4 if it's worth the time. The author establishes the conflict early, sometimes in the first sentence. The themes of hope, family, friendship and overcoming hardship appeal to most everyone.

Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.

It's rare to find someone excited over jury duty. If they're out there, I've never met them. Not a one. When the summons for jury duty arrives in the mail, how many people scream, 'Yes!' and run to clear the calendar? None. Our first and only reaction is, 'Oh, no,' quickly followed by, 'How can I get out of this?'

If you want to lose 40 pounds, you order salad instead of fries. If you want to be a better friend, you take the phone call instead of screening it. If you want to write a novel, you sit down and write a single paragraph. It's scary to make major changes, but we usually have enough courage to take the next right step.

When I turned 45, I lay in bed reflecting on all life had taught me. My soul sprang a leak and ideas flowed out. My pen simply caught them and set the words on paper. I typed them up and turned them into a newspaper column of the 45 lessons life taught me. When I hit 50, I added five more lessons and the paper ran the column again.

Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.

Before I started chemotherapy treatments, I wrote down the best advice from doctors, family, friends, books, and survivors and created an 'Owner's Manual' to help me take care of myself. It would remind me that cancer is doable.

Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.

The idea of being stuck in a plane with dozens of people chatting over each other on their phones might feel like Dante's 10th circle of hell.

Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.

It takes a strong person to cry. It takes a stronger person to let others see those tears.

When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.

I like that they call it an airplane cabin. A cabin is where you go to get away from stress. The cabin is a respite from the terminals on either end of the flight where noise bombards you as soon as you walk through the gate.

'Star Trek' never grabbed me. Every time I hear about Klingons, I think of those little lint balls that stick to your clothes in the dryer.

A book store is a treasure chest. Every time you walk in one, you strike gold.

Most of life is showing up. You do the best you can, which varies from day to day.

God isn't present in the past or future. The great 'I Am' is in the present moment. When I claim that presence, I can get through anything today.

As much as the Pulitzer is the hallmark of journalism, I think what I love the most is when somebody says they took my column and it's in their wallet. I have had people open their wallet and show me a corner of a column.

It doesn't matter what has happened to you, it matters what you do with what has happened to you. Life is like a poker game. You don't get to choose the cards you are dealt, but it's entirely up to you how to play the hand.

My daughter finished high school the same month I got my master's degree. I'm glad I didn't know when I gave birth to her at 21 what it would cost in terms of time, money and sacrifice to bring her to that graduation day.

The secret to success, to parenting, to life, is to not count up the cost. Don't focus on all the steps it will take. Don't stare into the abyss at the giant leap it will take. That view will keep you from taking the next small step.

Eating something fresh out of the oven is like a hug you can taste.

Frame every so-called disaster with these words: In five years, will this matter?

Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

If we want our daughters to honor their bodies, they need to hear us honor ours, no matter what size or shape we are, no matter what scars or sags we see in that mirror.

We are all on a journey of faith, and we have to polish that faith.

Cancer taught me to live only in the day I'm in. In the moment I'm in. Some moments, I simply ground myself by touching the desk, the table, the wall wherever I am and say, 'You're right here. Stay put in this moment.'

For me, being Catholic was who I was and who I am, just like I'm Irish and Slovak. It's just so ingrained in us.

When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.

Forgive everyone everything.

Life is not about how you survive the storm, but how you dance in the rain!

Choas will come, calm will follow, and then it will start up all over again. The secret is to savor the ride.

When in doubt, take the next step.

It's easier to forgive those who hurt you than those who hurt the people you love.

Your children get only one childhood.

While journalists cannot right every wrong, champion every cause or fix every problem, they can - through the written word - lift someone's burden for a day, make some elderly woman on a bus smile or let them know they are noticed by someone.

Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

Bakers get excited over aprons. I love the soft cotton ones with pockets like my gramma and mom wore. They always kept a hankie tucked in one pocket, which wasn't sanitary, but was comforting to the child who needed a tear or nose wiped.

To go after what you want in life, you have to silence the critics, starting with the biggest one: you.

When you hear the word 'cancer,' it's as if someone took the game of Life and tossed it in the air. All the pieces go flying. The pieces land on a new board. Everything has shifted. You don't know where to start.

In time, I found out that in God's economy nothing is ever wasted. All those "dead-end jobs" prepared me for the job of my dreams in journalism.

Cancer taught me to stop saving things for a special occasion. Every day is special. You don't have to get cancer to start living life to the fullest. My post-cancer philosophy? No wasted time. No ugly clothes. No boring movies.

We want someone else to act. But miracles aren't what other people do. They're what each of us does. They're what happens when ordinary people take extraordinary action. To be a miracle doesn't mean you have to tackle problems across the globe. It means making a difference in your own living room, cubicle, neighborhood, community.

Back when I was dating, the dreaded C word was Commitment. As soon as most men found out I had a child, they ran. If I ever got close enough to say the words, 'I love you,' they ran faster.

Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.