'You don't get to choose how you're going to die or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.'

'At every moment, we always have a choice, even if it feels as if we don’t. Sometimes that choice may simply be to think a more positive thought.'

- Singer Tina Turner (1993–2023)

'I've come to the conclusion that life is for the taking and just too short to dwell on the negative.'

- Cranberries lead singer Dolores O'Riordan (1971-2018)

'To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.'

- Diplomat Kofi Annan (1938-2018)

'All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate … I choose love.'

-Johnny Cash (1932-2003)

'Fear of life closes off more opportunities for us than fear of death ever does.'

- Actress Agnes Moorehead (1900–1974)

'Live a life so when I die, there's standing room only.'

- Tim McGraw (1967-present)

'The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.'

- American musician BB King (1925-2015)

'The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.'

- Billy Joel (1949-present)

'Voices ought not be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth.'

- Iconic singer Sam Cooke (1931–1964)

'You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.'

- Hollywood legend Bette Davis (1908 - 1989)

Revisiting the milieu of the Greenwich Village music scene

Few neighborhoods of the world stand out as more productive of a robust music scene than New York City's Greenwich Village, the bohemian launchpad of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and other folk artists of the 1960s and '70s. Expert David Browne discusses why it became so significant in this episode of "Sound Opinions."

'If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.'

- Activist Dorothy Height (1912-2010)

'When you come to a fork in the road, take it.'

- Baseball great Yogi Berra (1925-2015)

'I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot ... The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.'

- Author Jack London (1876 - 1916)

'It might be that some day I shall be drowned by the sea, or die of pneumonia from sleeping out at night, or be robbed and strangled by strangers. These things happen. Even so, I shall be ahead because of trusting the beach, the night and strangers.'

-Janet Reno, the US' first female attorney general (1938-2016)

A quote by Magic Johnson

"Celebrate the life you had, not the life you could've had."

'Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.'

- Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968)

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Joan Didion's 1975 commencement speech at UCR encouraged graduates to think outside of themselves

Filled with many widely circulated quotes, the talk addresses people's tendency to focus only on their personal ideologies and perceptions of the world. Didion advocates for being an active participant in the world, rather than existing only in our own bubbles.

'After you make a fool of yourself a few hundred times, you learn what works.'

- Musician Gwen Stefani (1969-present)

'Mockingbirds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy ... That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'

-Harper Lee (1926-2016) in "To Kill a Mockingbird"

'I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.'

- Comedian Joan Rivers (1933-2014)

Model Twiggy (1949 - ) on youth

"Being young isn't about age; it's about being a free spirit."

'There are only four kinds of people in the world—those who have been caregivers, those who are caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.'

- Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter (1927–2023)

After a dementia diagnosis, it's important to plan ahead but also savor the moment

The next steps after a diagnosis include taking lifestyle steps to slow disease progression and completing legal paperwork about long-term medical preferences. It's also important to appreciate the moments and days ahead and find humor in them, when possible. (Some users may encounter a paywall.)

In 'Cut Piece,' Yoko Ono invited the audience to her clothes

Much more than simply John Lennon’s partner, Yoko Ono is a prolific multimedia artist in her own right. Her 1964 performance "Cut Piece" invited audience members to come onstage and cut away pieces of her clothing. She described the piece as being about solidarity between women and the possibility for world peace, saying, “By not fighting, we show them that there's a whole world, which could exist by being peaceful.”

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Cultural norms about how to handle the bodies of loved ones in communities in West Africa have hampered Ebola responses.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Firework or sparkler burns, even if they cover a relatively small area of skin, can significantly affect our range of motion.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.