All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.

It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.

There is everything you know and there is everything that happens. When the two do not line up, you make a choice.

..I buried myself in accomplishments, because with accomplishments, I believed I could control things, I could squeeze in every last piece of happiness before I got sick and died.. which I figured was my natural fate.

The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves.

There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, I'm so angry and bitter. But it doesn't last too long. Then I get up and say, 'I want to live..'
'So far, I've been able to do it. Will I be able to continue? I don't know. But I'm betting on myself I will.'
Koppel seemed extremely taken with Morrie. He asked about the humility that death induced.