Robert Fulghum

The pig was so earnest. So sincere. So very “there.” The pig brought gravity and mythic import to this well-worn fairy tale.

"... "Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.

Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.

There are far worse things to drop on people than Crayolas.

"Alla fine, dopo aver lottato contro tutto ciò che avrei dovuto fare diversamente, se avessi saputo allora quello che so adesso, posso dare finalmente una risposta al seguente quesito: "Se potessi rivivere daccapo la tua vita, cosa faresti?" Dopo un'attenta riflessione sono giunto alla conclusione che rifarei tutto quello che ho fatto."

"Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn't keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn't playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.

There's hiding and there's finding, we'd say. And he'd say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we'd all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn't play with him anymore if he didn't get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He's probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.

As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, "GET FOUND, KID!" out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It's real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.

A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say good-bye.

He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide.

Wherever and however any one of us may be conceived, it is the same. We come into being in the arms of God.

My convictions have validity for me because I have experimented with the compounds of ideas of others in the laboratory of my mind. And I've tested the results in the living out of my life. At twenty-one, I had drawn an abstract map based on the evidence of others. At sixty, I have accumulated a practical guide grounded in my own experience. At twenty-one, I could discuss transportation theory with authority. At sixty, I know which bus to catch to go where, what the fare is, and how to get back home again. It is not my bus, but I know how to use it.

Imagination is more important than information. Einstein said that, and he should know. And they come. And they look. And we push. And they fly. We to stay and die on our beds. They to go and die howsoever, yet inspiring those who come after them to find their own edge. And fly.

If I don't have time to live my life well the first time, when am I going to find the time to go back and live it over?

Why isn't love easy?
I don't know. And the raccoons don't say.

You want my opinion? We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.

For forty years I combed my hair that way, and every time I did, I pushed my mother away from me. There was much she didn’t like about my life — and the parting of my hair became a ritual parting of the ways with her.

Now Everybody has some secret goals in life...Sometimes you can get what you want and what you need at the sames time.

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned. These are the things you already know: