I believe in animal rights, and high among them is the right to the gentle stroke of a human hand.

Those who avoid the tough choices of life, live a life they never chose.

To have success, you can't let failure stop you. To have great success, you can't let success stop you.

A parent's love is whole, no matter how many times divided.

Family life is a bit like a runny peach pie -- not perfect but who's complaining?

I guess, when you get down to it, a loving touch compensates for an unskilled hand about everywhere except in an airplane cockpit.

In a houseful of toddlers and pets, you can start out having a bad day, but you keep getting detoured.

In sinners and repenters you have the original division of labor.

For lack of an occasional expression of love, a relationship strong at the seams can wear thin in the middle.

As you seek new opportunity, keep in mind that the sun does not usually reappear on the horizon where last seen.

There are more martyrs to nonsense than truth, truth preferring missionaries.

As important as it is to keep picking yourself up and brushing yourself off, it's also important to stop tripping over your own two feet.

You don't realize how little accuracy there is in network TV reporting until they cover a story in your hometown.

You can think of a painter as a trio -- the artist, his talent and his muse, the last two always on the lookout for a new brush man.

Parenthood is the passing of a baton, followed by a lifelong disagreement as to who dropped it.

Stored away in some brain cell is the image of a long-departed aunt you haven't thought of in 30 years. Stored away in another cell is the image of a pink pony stitched on your first set of baby pajamas. All it takes to get that aunt mounted on the back of that pony is to eat a hunk of meatloaf immediately before going to bed.

The choice so often these days is to believe something that seems insane or go insane.

I would love to go back and travel the road not taken, if I knew at the end of it I'd find the same set of grandkids.

No matter what you do in life, a part of you still sits at a curbside, still hearing the drumbeat of a distant parade, still waiting for it to turn the corner.

Life is short, God's way of encouraging a bit of focus.