Regina Brett famous quotes
04-17-2025
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No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
-- Regina Brett -
Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
-- Regina Brett -
Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
-- Regina Brett -
Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
-- Regina Brett -
God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
If baking is any labor at all, it's a labor of love. A love that gets passed from generation to generation.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
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 -
Frame every so-called disaster with these words: In five years, will this matter?
-- Regina Brett -
Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
-- Regina Brett -
Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
-- Regina Brett -
No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
-- Regina Brett -
Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
-- Regina Brett -
When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
-- Regina Brett -
Eating something fresh out of the oven is like a hug you can taste.
-- Regina Brett -
If we threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
-- Regina Brett -
It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
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 -
There are few places you can find silence. Air travel could be the last fortress of solitude.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
I usually give a book 40 pages. If it doesn't grab me by then, adios. With young adult books, you can usually tell by Page 4 if it's worth the time. The author establishes the conflict early, sometimes in the first sentence. The themes of hope, family, friendship and overcoming hardship appeal to most everyone.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
We need to be smarter than our smart phones and realize the people we are with are more important than the people we aren't with, and way more important than the strangers we hope will tweet and like and share and Instagram whatever we're sending out into the cybersphere.
-- Regina Brett -
To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I've ever written.
-- Regina Brett -
Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
We've come a long way from having one land line that was forbidden to be answered during dinner. We had no answering machine, just a dad who barked, 'Who calls during dinner? If it's important, they'll call back.' He was right.
-- Regina Brett -
Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
-- Regina Brett -
I think of her every time I judge myself or someone else too harshly. How do we really know the worth of our work? It's not our job to judge the worth of what we offer the world, but to keep offering it regardless. You might never know the true worth of your efforts. Or it could simply be too soon to tell.
-- Regina Brett -
We want someone else to act. But miracles aren't what other people do. They're what each of us does. They're what happens when ordinary people take extraordinary action. To be a miracle doesn't mean you have to tackle problems across the globe. It means making a difference in your own living room, cubicle, neighborhood, community.
-- Regina Brett -
Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
-- Regina Brett -
However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
-- Regina Brett -
Writer's block.. when one curses the blinking cursor on the blank page.
-- Regina Brett -
From now on, I pray like I mean it. No more hitting SEND over and over. It's changed my life. It has freed me from fear and opened up endless avenues for me as a writer, radio host, parent, wife, and friend. It has enhanced every relationship I'm in, starting with the most important one: my relationship with God. Real faith isn't praying without ceasing. It's believing that God heard you the first time.
-- Regina Brett -
Some days, 24 hours is too much to stay put in, so I take the day hour by hour, moment by moment. I break the task, the challenge, the fear into small, bite-size pieces. I can handle a piece of fear, depression, anger, pain, sadness, loneliness, illness. I actually put my hands up to my face, one next to each eye, like blinders on a horse.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
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 -
...there were two kinds of women: those who wear nail polish and those who don't. Which do you prefer?...
-- Regina Brett -
You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
-- Regina Brett -
Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
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 -
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 -
The last watch I wore felt like a handcuff. When I need to know the time, I check my cell phone.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
'Star Trek' never grabbed me. Every time I hear about Klingons, I think of those little lint balls that stick to your clothes in the dryer.
-- Regina Brett -
Most of life is showing up. You do the best you can, which varies from day to day.
-- Regina Brett -
If you're lucky enough to still have grandparents, visit them, cherish them and celebrate them while you can.
-- Regina Brett -
If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
-- Regina Brett -
God isn't present in the past or future. The great 'I Am' is in the present moment. When I claim that presence, I can get through anything today.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
Family is more than DNA, more than who we used to be, more than we can imagine we will become.
-- Regina Brett -
A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.
-- Regina Brett -
A book store is a treasure chest. Every time you walk in one, you strike gold.
-- Regina Brett -
It's easier to forgive those who hurt you than those who hurt the people you love.
-- Regina Brett -
No one really has a bad life. Not even a bad day. Just bad moments.
-- Regina Brett -
If you want to lose 40 pounds, you order salad instead of fries. If you want to be a better friend, you take the phone call instead of screening it. If you want to write a novel, you sit down and write a single paragraph. It's scary to make major changes, but we usually have enough courage to take the next right step.
-- Regina Brett -
It's rare to find someone excited over jury duty. If they're out there, I've never met them. Not a one. When the summons for jury duty arrives in the mail, how many people scream, 'Yes!' and run to clear the calendar? None. Our first and only reaction is, 'Oh, no,' quickly followed by, 'How can I get out of this?'
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.
-- Regina Brett -
Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
-- Regina Brett -
God never gives us more than what we can carry.
-- Regina Brett -
The secret to success, to parenting, to life, is to not count up the cost. Don't focus on all the steps it will take. Don't stare into the abyss at the giant leap it will take. That view will keep you from taking the next small step.
-- Regina Brett -
When you write a book, you are asking someone to make an investment in their time and money. A column can come and go as the weeks pass, but a book needs to be timeless.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
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 -
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 -
When I turned 45, I lay in bed reflecting on all life had taught me. My soul sprang a leak and ideas flowed out. My pen simply caught them and set the words on paper. I typed them up and turned them into a newspaper column of the 45 lessons life taught me. When I hit 50, I added five more lessons and the paper ran the column again.
-- Regina Brett -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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
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