Regina Brett

There are few places you can find silence. Air travel could be the last fortress of solitude.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's easier to forgive those who hurt you than those who hurt the people you love.

We all have that power to have a soul that magnifies God.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For years I heeded the warning: Do monthly breast self-exams. Like most women, I did them on a 'sort of' basis. Every few months I'd sort of do a quick feel, but never as thoroughly as the doctors urged. I didn't want to go looking for trouble. If you look for it, you might find it. Looking for cancer is unsettling. Thank God I looked.

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.

Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.

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.

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.

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?'

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.

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.

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.