Robert Fulghum

I tend to keep books of art more than anything else now. I'm interested in visual things. And astronomy books. Things you can look at over and over and over again and see something new. … My notions of God and the universe have always been too small. And limited by language. So now I'm looking at picture books. My children say I'm just beginning to enter my dotage: can't read, just looks at picture books.

The propositions: To be human is to be religious. To be religious is to be mindful. To be mindful is to pay attention. To pay attention is to sanctify existence.
Rituals are one way in which attention is paid. Rituals arise from the stages and ages of life. Rituals transform the ordinary into the holy.
Rituals may be public, private, or secret. Rituals may be spontaneous or arranged. Rituals are in constant evolution and reformation.
Rituals create sacred time. Sacred time is the dwelling place of the Eternal. Haste and ambition are the adversaries of sacred time.
Is this so?

Life-and-death. Lifedeath. One event. One short event. Don’t forget.

I may be wrong

It’s harder to talk about, but what I really, really, really want for Christmas is just this: I want to be 5 years old again for an hour. I want to laugh a lot and cry a lot. I want to be picked or rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, and carried up to be just one more time. I know what I really want for Christmas: I want my childhood back. People who think good thoughts give good gifts.

Peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something you are, something you do, and something you give away.

So you drive as far as you can, even when you can clearly read the sign. You want to think you are exempt, that it doesn’t apply to you. But it does. Life is still a dead end. And we still have a hard time believing it

I use Cheer. I like the idea of a happy wash.

Never, ever regret or apologize for believing that when one man or one woman decides to risk addressing the world with truth, the world may stop what it is doing and hear. There is too much evidence to the contrary.

Everything I need to know... I learned in kindergarten.

But love may have to be left off the exam. Most of us will never learn.

Does the giraffe know what he's for? Or care? Or even think about his place in things? A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.

It wasn’t in books. It wasn’t in a church. What I needed to know was out there in the world.

We could learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box.

Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.