"...So, here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. ... Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around.
... All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well, will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. ... It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back, because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that in part, by telling others what I had learned. ... Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived."
... All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well, will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. ... It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back, because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that in part, by telling others what I had learned. ... Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived."
Speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American University where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.