Mike Mills Quotes

My brother dying changed me. I didn't realize how strong I was until I lost my brother.

My book 'Trust Your Heart', which is the story of my life, will be followed by 'Singing Lessons', a memoir of love, loss, hope, and healing, which talks about the death of my son and the hope that has been the aftermath of the healing from that tragedy.

It makes you tougher. And when you lose a child, no one can say anything that is ever going to impact you.

First of all, a lot of people, a lot of women and men, have lost their children. I'm not the only one. But I happen to be blessed that my son gave me all these things to work with so that I get to work out my grief in a way that other people are not able to. So I can't possibly be downtrodden about that.

I know when my parents passed away, I wanted all the support I could get.

When my father died in my arms it had such a profound affect on me that at that very moment when my dad passed I realized that I needed to face my own fears.

I think, in real life, when we're facing death - that is, when we come out on the other side of it, whether it's death of a friend or a family member - you come out on the other side of the mourning cherishing your life that much more.

It's been difficult for me to get my head around Diana's death or talk about it. After she died, things were difficult, very difficult. We all have our own traumas and get on with it. But when it's there in your face year in, year out, it's hard.

Obviously, I got very lucky that even though I lost my mother, I lost her later in life, but it's still had a profound effect on me.

When you lose someone whose life was so extraordinary like my dad's, you have two options: You can curl up in a dark corner... or rise above it and dust yourself off and continue with their work. He will always be with me.

When my mother died, I had to go on air that night and do jokes.

How one deals with the death of a loved one is a highly personalized affair. Some people weep for days; others take a hike in the woods or count rosary beads.

I don't deal with death very well. My brother, John Candy, my dad, my mom, Brandon Tartikoff just a couple of weeks ago. I mean, you lose a lot of people in your life, and that's one thing I am constantly working on - pain management.

For a culture that has such a problem with death, we seem to deal with it in a quite bizarre way. We see people shot, killed and blown up, and we find it funny and sexy and all those things. But, the reality of it is that every day people die, and people are really sad and they grieve and they go through a really difficult process with it.

I've had various people close to me die, and I don't necessarily find the idea of death purely depressing.

From the moment my dad died, from the moment I found out there was the possibility of his dying, there were many surprises - years after, minutes after. The moments I was okay were as surprising as the ones that I wasn't. Making it through the eulogy without losing it. And then the guilt I felt about it. Surprise!

It's a hard thing to imagine how somebody copes with grief and at the same time has to build a new life.

I've seen so many women in my family, so many mothers, that have lost children in the war in such absurd ways. I wonder how they do it. How do they keep living? How do they keep smiling?

As a man, if you lose your wife, it's a horrible experience, especially with kids. But when one person passes away and you're still alive, people still depend on you - that's what you have to lean on.

I lost three cousins and a best friend, and they all came at the wrong time. Everyone told me to be strong and that they were in a better place. But I didn't want to hear that. They were gone and I will never see them again.

My parents and my sister died... very close together, and after that, I lost quite a bit of my sense of humor. Most of it I think has kind of come back, but I know there was a time when I didn't think things were funny anymore. I kind of think they're funny again.

Me, I'm not a guy who's dealt with a lot of death in my life, so when it hits you, it hits hard, you question different things.

If you live through the death of your child, you should be able to talk about it and let other people know it's OK to go on.

I lost my father when I was four, so maybe that was always in the background. Losing my brother kicked it into overdrive. When you get to such an intense place of suffering, you either have the choice to continue suffering or figure a way not to.

My father passed away when I was 18. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but it is not like that all the time. Not every moment is dark.