Top 100 Regina Brett Quotes
#1. As much as the Pulitzer is the hallmark of journalism, I think what I love the most is when somebody says they took my column and it's in their wallet. I have had people open their wallet and show me a corner of a column.
Regina Brett
#3. To go after what you want in life, you have to silence the critics, starting with the biggest one: you.
Regina Brett
#4. God never gives us more than what we can carry.
Regina Brett
#6. For me, being Catholic was who I was and who I am, just like I'm Irish and Slovak. It's just so ingrained in us.
Regina Brett
#7. There are few places you can find silence. Air travel could be the last fortress of solitude.
Regina Brett
#8. I still miss my gramma. I can see her at the farm, in her apron, babushka and support stockings. My Slovak gramma spoiled us with pig in the blankets, kalachi, pop, chips and a drawer full of lollipops. It was heaven.
Regina Brett
#9. Greet every morning with open arms and say thanks every night with a full heart. Each day is a precious gift to be savored and used, not left unopened and hoarded for a future that may never come.
Regina Brett
#10. My daughter finished high school the same month I got my master's degree. I'm glad I didn't know when I gave birth to her at 21 what it would cost in terms of time, money and sacrifice to bring her to that graduation day.
Regina Brett
#11. Back when I was dating, the dreaded C word was Commitment. As soon as most men found out I had a child, they ran. If I ever got close enough to say the words, 'I love you,' they ran faster.
Regina Brett
#12. Writer's block.. when one curses the blinking cursor on the blank page.
Regina Brett
#13. I like that they call it an airplane cabin. A cabin is where you go to get away from stress. The cabin is a respite from the terminals on either end of the flight where noise bombards you as soon as you walk through the gate.
Regina Brett
#14. Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying.
Regina Brett
#15. Life is not about how you survive the storm, but how you dance in the rain!
Regina Brett
#16. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
Regina Brett
#17. The idea of being stuck in a plane with dozens of people chatting over each other on their phones might feel like Dante's 10th circle of hell.
Regina Brett
#18. Sometimes you have to disconnect to stay connected. Remember the old days when you had eye contact during a conversation? When everyone wasn't looking down at a device in their hands? We've become so focused on that tiny screen that we forget the big picture, the people right in front of us.
Regina Brett
#19. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
Regina Brett
#20. No matter how I feel, I get up, dress up, and show up for life. When I do, the day always serves up more than I could have hoped for. Each day truly is a slice of heaven. Some days the slices are just smaller than others.
Regina Brett
#21. Pope Francis is not only changing the face of the Catholic Church, he's challenging us to be the face of God in the world by seeing the face of God in the person we least expect to see it, including the person in the mirror.
Regina Brett
#22. It's easier to forgive those who hurt you than those who hurt the people you love.
Regina Brett
#23. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
Regina Brett
#24. When I was 41, I found a lump the size of a grape in my right breast. I ended up bald, sick and exhausted from surgeries, chemo and radiation treatments. Ah, but I got to live.
Regina Brett
#26. We all have that power to have a soul that magnifies God.
Regina Brett
#27. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
Regina Brett
#28. Get busy living the life of your dreams instead of looking for the man or woman of your dreams.
Regina Brett
#29. My daughter had carried within her a story that kept hurting her: Her dad abandoned her. She started telling herself a new story. Her dad had done the best he could. He wasn't capable of giving more. It had nothing to do with her. She could no longer take it personally.
Regina Brett
#30. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
Regina Brett
#31. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
Regina Brett
#32. Some people hate funerals. I find them comforting. They hit the pause button on life and remind us that it has an end. Every eulogy reminds me to deepen my dash, that place on the tombstone between our birth and our death.
Regina Brett
#33. It's sad that grandkids show up at the end of obituaries, way behind the list of work place achievements, social clubs and survivors. Why last? If you've got grandkids, you know they're first when it comes to the joy in your life.
Regina Brett
#34. A book store is a treasure chest. Every time you walk in one, you strike gold.
Regina Brett
#35. Baking happens with ingredients that last for months and come to life inside a warm oven. Baking is slow and leisurely.
Regina Brett
#36. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
Regina Brett
#37. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
Regina Brett
#38. A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.
Regina Brett
#39. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
Regina Brett
#40. If we want our daughters to honor their bodies, they need to hear us honor ours, no matter what size or shape we are, no matter what scars or sags we see in that mirror.
Regina Brett
#41. God never gives us more than we were designed to carry.
Regina Brett
#42. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
Regina Brett
#43. If you're lucky enough to still have grandparents, visit them, cherish them and celebrate them while you can.
Regina Brett
#44. I once heard someone say that prayer is more than words. It's a stance you take, a position you claim. You throw your body against the door to keep the demons from advancing and stay put until they go away.
Regina Brett
#45. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
Regina Brett
#46. Sometimes you have to censor books. When I read 'Peter Rabbit,' I skip the part about Peter's father ending up in one of Mrs. McGregor's pies. I also hid the book of 'Grimm Fairy Tales.' They're just too grim for my grandkids. Reality will come soon enough.
Regina Brett
#47. Cancer is messy and scary. You throw everything at it, but don't forget to throw love at it. It turns out that might be the best weapon of all.
Regina Brett
#48. How do you know someone is a grandparent? They've got milk stains on every shirt from burping babies. Their pants are worn out at the knees from crawling around giving pony rides. They have 2,842 pictures of the grandkids on their smart phone and not one photo of their spouse.
Regina Brett
#49. It doesn't matter what has happened to you, it matters what you do with what has happened to you. Life is like a poker game. You don't get to choose the cards you are dealt, but it's entirely up to you how to play the hand.
Regina Brett
#50. Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.
Regina Brett
#51. Cancer is a great wake-up call. A call to take the tag off the new lingerie and wear that black lacy slip. To open the box of pearls and put them on. To crack open the bath oil beads before they shrivel up in a bowl on the toilet tank.
Regina Brett
#53. I always felt that at the moment I was born, God must have blinked. He missed the occasion and never knew I had arrived. My parents had 11 children. While I love them and my five brothers and five sisters deeply, some days I felt lost in the litter.
Regina Brett
#54. Bakers get excited over aprons. I love the soft cotton ones with pockets like my gramma and mom wore. They always kept a hankie tucked in one pocket, which wasn't sanitary, but was comforting to the child who needed a tear or nose wiped.
Regina Brett
#55. Before I started chemotherapy treatments, I wrote down the best advice from doctors, family, friends, books, and survivors and created an 'Owner's Manual' to help me take care of myself. It would remind me that cancer is doable.
Regina Brett
#56. When you have cancer, it's like you enter a new time zone: the Cancer Zone. Everything in the Tropic of Cancer revolves around your health or your sickness. I didn't want my whole life to revolve around cancer. Life came first; cancer came second.
Regina Brett
#57. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
Regina Brett
#58. Cancer taught me to stop saving things for a special occasion. Every day is special. You don't have to get cancer to start living life to the fullest. My post-cancer philosophy? No wasted time. No ugly clothes. No boring movies.
Regina Brett
#59. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
Regina Brett
#61. When you hear the word 'cancer,' it's as if someone took the game of Life and tossed it in the air. All the pieces go flying. The pieces land on a new board. Everything has shifted. You don't know where to start.
Regina Brett
#62. Time heals almost everything. Give time, time.
Regina Brett
#63. We all have a personal pool of quicksand inside us where we begin to sink and need friends and family to find us and remind us of all the good that has been and will be.
Regina Brett
#65. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
Regina Brett
#66. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
Regina Brett
#67. Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.
Regina Brett
#68. The only gift my dad ever bought me is still in my jewelry box. It died at 10 minutes to 11 decades ago, but the gold Caravelle watch keeps my dad alive. A watch isn't about keeping time. It's about stopping it.
Regina Brett
#69. In time, I found out that in God's economy nothing is ever wasted. All those "dead-end jobs" prepared me for the job of my dreams in journalism.
Regina Brett
#70. If no one shopped on Thanksgiving Day, the stores wouldn't open. End of story. I say we all take the pledge and stay home. Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks for what you have, not to save a few dollars to get more.
Regina Brett
#71. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
Regina Brett
#72. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
Regina Brett
#73. I used to think only people like Mother Teresa and Gandhi had a mission in life. We all have one. How do you find it? You listen to your life.
All those dead-end jobs? There's no such thing. In God's economy, nothing is ever wasted. The dots all connect in time.
Regina Brett
#74. Cancer taught me to live only in the day I'm in. In the moment I'm in. Some moments, I simply ground myself by touching the desk, the table, the wall wherever I am and say, 'You're right here. Stay put in this moment.'
Regina Brett
#75. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
Regina Brett
#76. Choas will come, calm will follow, and then it will start up all over again. The secret is to savor the ride.
Regina Brett
#77. This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice in it and be glad.
Regina Brett
#78. Eating something fresh out of the oven is like a hug you can taste.
Regina Brett
#79. Almost every month, I have a day where I get stuck in the mud of me. I used to blame hormones and PMS. After I hit 50, I blamed the lack of hormones. But men get stuck, too, so it must simply be the human condition.
Regina Brett
#80. We are all on a journey of faith, and we have to polish that faith.
Regina Brett
#81. When you finally let go of the person you used to be, you get to discover the person you are now and the person you want to become.
Regina Brett
#82. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: In five years, will this matter?
Regina Brett
#83. I grew up Catholic. We went to confession on Saturday, stood in the shortest line, since it led to the priest who gave the easiest penance - usually a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys. We confessed in private, prayed our penance and our souls were clean.
Regina Brett
#84. Most of life is showing up. You do the best you can, which varies from day to day.
Regina Brett
#85. While journalists cannot right every wrong, champion every cause or fix every problem, they can - through the written word - lift someone's burden for a day, make some elderly woman on a bus smile or let them know they are noticed by someone.
Regina Brett
#86. The world isn't ending. You are just experiencing turbulence. The plane is safe. The pilot is good. You're in the right seat of life. You just hit a patch of bumpy air. Wait. It will pass.
Regina Brett
#87. It's scary to make major changes, but we usually have enough courage to take the next right step. One small step and then another. That's what it takes to raise a child, to get a degree, to write a book, to do whatever it is your heart desires.
Regina Brett
#88. Even if you have nothing in your wallet, nothing can keep you from having a great summer. You can listen to crickets sing you to sleep, trace the Big Dipper, breathe in the stars, run through a sprinkler, host a cartwheel contest in the front yard.
Regina Brett
#89. Choice, not chance, determines your destiny. It's up to you to decide what you are worth, how you matter, and how you make meaning in the world. No one else has your gifts
your set of talents, ideas, interests. You are an original. A masterpiece.
Regina Brett
#90. Life isn't about how you survived the storm ... it's about how you danced in the rain. Dance with me.
Regina Brett
#91. Wouldn't it be great if health-care plans included a list of Buddhist monks among the network providers?
Regina Brett
#92. No one really has a bad life. Not even a bad day. Just bad moments.
Regina Brett
#94. It takes courage to sit on a jury. How many of us want to decide the fate of another person's life or freedom? How many of us want to hold that kind of power in our hands?
Regina Brett
#95. Too often, we get attention and sympathy by being a victim. If we're invested in someone being our villain, we must love being the victim. We have to let go of both characters in the story.
Regina Brett
#96. It takes tough love to order kids to step away from the iPhone or iPad during dinner or to take the devices away if they're interrupting and interfering with everyone else's pleasure at a movie, concert or other public event.
Regina Brett
#97. There were two kinds of women: those who wear nail polish and those who don't. Which do you prefer? ...
Regina Brett
#98. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
Regina Brett
#99. Family is more than DNA, more than who we used to be, more than we can imagine we will become.
Regina Brett
#100. There's so much living to be squeeze into the cracks of one little day. You can make someone laugh, smile, hope, sing, think.
Regina Brett
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