Randy Pausch (1960-2008)

Quotes

• It's not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed, it is the things we do not.

• We don't beat the Grim Reaper by living longer, we beat the Reaper by living well and living fully, for the Reaper will come for all of us. The question is what do we do between the time we are born and the time he shows up. It's too late to do all the things that you're gonna kinda get around to.

• You will need to find your passion. Don't give up on finding it because then all you're doing is waiting for the Reaper.

• You will not find your passion in things and you will not find your passion in money. The more things and the more money you have, the more you will look around and use that as the metric and there will be someone with more.

• Your pasion must come from the things that fuel you from the inside. Honors and awards are nice things, but only to the extent that they regard the real respect from your peers.

• Advice is very easy to give, and even easier not to follow, so I don't fool with it.

• Call home at least once a week. It's a proven fact that we call home less the older we get. And that's wrong. It should be the other way around. As we get older, our parents get older.

• Read at least one book a month. This is self-serving, obviously. It's a proven fact that people who read buy more books than people who don't read. In truth, I wish you'd read ten books a month, or at least buy that many.

• The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story.

• I have never thought of writing as hard work, but I have worked hard to find a voice.

• The size of your audience doesn't matter. What's important is that your audience is listening.

• Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough.

• Don't bail; the best pieces of gold are at the bottom of the barrel of crap.

• Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

• It's not about how to achieve your dreams, its about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you.