Christopher Timothy Quotes

Once you have a disease like cancer, you look at life a bit differently. Some things that were important no longer seem as important as they were.

Cancer has given me a dose of humility. I'm much more empathetic. It's a club I would rather not have joined, but it is a club.

Cancer stops you in your tracks. It really makes you think about what's important. In a second, life can change. Don't ever forget to say thank you for love and family. What good is your success without them?

When you see people your own age afflicted and experiencing life-threatening illnesses, I think it prompts you to apply to yourself the philosophy, 'I want to do the best I know how to do every day.'

I had gone through a near-death experience, and that gives you an insight into how fleeting life is, and what's important.

Circulating through the children's ward and seeing terminally ill kids, heads shaved, smiling and having a ball despite the tubes and needles sticking into them, I thought: What do I have to worry about? If God takes me, at least I've lived for 35 years.

Everyone should have cancer one time - then you'd know that other things aren't important. The guy that gives you the finger at the stoplight don't mean nothing anymore. You come home and something's cold, or you didn't get something in the mail. Big deal. You want to get up every day and see your family and your friends.

I was angry and frustrated until I started my own family and my first child was born. Until then I didn't really appreciate life the way I should have, but fortunately I woke up.

People grow; people grow apart, and cancer... I've had a very in-depth and personal experience with cancer, and it really causes a perspective shift.

I always tell people I'm grateful for my cancer diagnosis because it was the greatest gift because it completely changed my life. I was able to stop and let my whole life and world just crash over me like a wave. And I stood there and went, 'Wow.' And for the first time, I stopped everything. I had to.

I've been five times to Mali, and when you're there, it makes you feel differently, like you realise you've a lot in life to be thankful for, and you have to give something back as well.

How could any of us truly appreciate our lives if we had nothing else to compare them to?

Believe me, if a man doesn't know death, he doesn't know life.

I don't think life is to be taken too seriously. Take it too seriously, and it'll getcha.

I think as I've gotten older, I've learned to look at life and take every day as it comes.

Who is happy with his appearance? I find many drawbacks of myself. But, each time when I visit Lourdes, I receive a lesson of reconciliation. When you see ill people or invalids around, you realize that it is a sin to complain!

I had such a wonderful life before drugs and alcohol abuse. I've got that life back now and plan to keep it. Maybe I had to go through what I did to get to this point, to appreciate this life more.

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.

And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about.

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

When one is young, aspiring to play for the country, doing well, any hindrance, like injury or being out of form, can be frustrating and a cause of annoyance or even anger. But once you have a close encounter with death, you realise the real value of life.

I've kind of got an out in cancer. It keeps things in perspective for me.

Ya know, right now the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all I thank God I'm alive today, and I mean that. I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing.

At the age of 18, I made up my mind to never have another bad day in my life. I dove into a endless sea of gratitude from which I've never emerged.

In my mind and in my heart, I feel okay. I cannot complain that I haven't lived long enough, but I'd like to live longer.