Will Schwalbe - The End of Your Life Book Club

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If our family was an airline, Mom was the hub and we were the spokes. You rarely went anywhere nonstop; you went via Mom, who directed the traffic flow and determined the priorities: which family member was cleared for takeoff or landing. Even my father was not immune to Mom's scheduling, though he was given more leeway than the rest of us.

Will Schwalbe
It's not hard to read about death abstractly. I do find it tough when a character I love dies, of course. You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them.

Will Schwalbe
If I'd waited until I was well rested to read, I never would have read anything.

Will Schwalbe
We all have a lot more to read than we can read and a lot more to do than we can do.

Will Schwalbe
I was learning that when you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.

Will Schwalbe
The greatest gift you can give anyone is your undivided attention...

Will Schwalbe
As a reader, you're often inside one or more character heads, so you know what they're feeling, even if they can't exactly say it, or they say it so obliquely that the other characters don't catch it. Readers are frequently reminded of the gulf between what people say and what they mean, and such moments prod us to become more attuned to gesture, tone, and language.

Will Schwalbe
That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves.

Will Schwalbe
In Gilead, the narrator's friend's son describes himself not as an atheist but in "state of categorical unbelief." He says, "I don't even believe God doesn't exist, if you see what I mean." I pointed this passage out to Mom and said it closely matched my own views-I just didn't think about religion.

Will Schwalbe