Elizabeth Edwards

I was a 16-year-old girl at one point, so of course I wrote poetry.

In a sense, having cancer takes you by the shoulders and shakes you.

To be perfectly frank, there is an odd place after losing a child, where you think somehow your life is worth less.

One of the things that I think you see sometimes in politics is a certain degree of caution. It's usually advised by consultants who don't want to see you march to the end of a limb.

Part of resilience is deciding to make yourself miserable over something that matters, or deciding to make yourself miserable over something that doesn't matter.

What we hope to achieve is a society that doesn't value a white man because he's a white man, but also doesn't value a woman because she's a woman, or a black because he's a black.

My job as the mother of daughters is to make sure my children see that every opportunity is available to them.

What happened after Katrina is that people were stirred to action; there were an enormous number of contributions by people trying to make a difference. But then we forget. We've forgotten Katrina victims, we've forgotten the face of poverty.

I could be wrong, but I think heterosexual marriage is threatened more by heterosexuals. I don't know why gay marriage challenges my marriage in any way.

I have a husband who adores me.

I think self-knowledge is the rarest trait in a human being.

I'm a recovering lawyer. The practice of law has changed. Every agreement is a fight.

It's just a part of our nature to hope.

You know, everybody knows some of what politicians say is malarkey, and having somebody there to call them on it is good. I'd be happy to do that any time and any place.

I have less energy than I did when I was a younger parent, although I was never really a young parent.

I'm actually one of those people who get up energetic in the morning.

Almost everybody embraces life.

Brave people are the firemen who run into the burning building. That's brave.

I want to reclaim who I am.

Every parent has gone through a period when their child wasn't so happy with them.

I do think voters do take into consideration - particularly early state voters - take into consideration a wide range of factors, including electability, and they know that part of electability is the total package that you're presenting.

I think being an effective First Lady is first of all being the partner that your husband needs.

Everybody has their burdens, their grief that they carry with them.

You never know when something's going to hit you in a particular way and just knock you loose.

People find it a great blessing if their child left behind a child.

You know, there are no guarantees on prognosis.

Having bought furniture for my own house, and bought furniture for our house in Washington, a furniture store seemed like a good idea, and it also played into my personal history.

I love children, love spending time with them; I love getting things for them.

I'm not a victim - I never want to be perceived that way.

Part of what I want to do is sort of reclaim my story - it belongs to me and to my children, who have to live with whoever their mother is.

I love my books.

My job is to stay alive until the medicine and research catch up.

I'm part of a community that holds each other up, and it's been great to be held up too.

A lot of sad stories in a row - that wears on you.

I loved campaigning.

My heart goes out to the grieving parents who lost their two-year-old or their newborn.

You recognize a survivor when you see one. You recognize a fighter when you see one.

My father had gone to Vietnam.

Growing up in an Italian family, you use a harsh tone and 10 minutes later everybody forgets about it.

Life is this great big blackboard, and on it you write all the things that you do.

I've spent a lot of words on my own mortality.

I have three living children for whom this is a father who I want them to love and on whom they're going to have to rely if my disease takes a bad turn.

Everybody makes personal decisions that are right for them and if you're in political life, you're used to having those analyzed.

By what you do, you teach your children how to respond to difficult information.

Honestly, I get energized by the crowds. They feed me emotionally.

The worst thing to me would be that you put on the face you think people want to see, and then they don't like it and you think, Would they have liked the real me?

You wouldn't know I was sick unless you knew I was sick.

We were never a family that had a lot. We had enough, but not a lot.

I come out of real life.

I am imperfect in a million ways, but I always thought I was the kind of woman, the kind of wife to whom a husband would be faithful.