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I want to go and go, and then drop dead in the middle of something I'm loving to do. And if that doesn't happen, if I wind up sitting in a wheelchair, at least I'll have my high heels on.

I've seen my mom confined to a wheelchair in the last three years of her life. Both her knees had given way, and there was no way she could undergo surgery at her age. Even though I was concerned for her, I didn't know at that time what she had to go through.

When I was a child, doctors sent my grandmother home in a wheelchair to die. Diagnosed with end-stage heart disease, she already had so much scar tissue from bypass operations that the surgeons had essentially run out of plumbing. There was nothing more to do, they said; her life was over at 65.

No one wants to live in a wheelchair unable to talk, only winking once for yes and twice for no. It's perfectly reasonable that there will come a point where the balance of judgment of life over death swings the other way.

People who couldn't walk, they'd come in wheelchairs, and he'd make them walk. It's just the power of God. It wasn't my dad; it's what God had instructed my dad to do.

Instead of joyfully looking forward to my birth, my mother began systematically preparing for her own death. She was fatalistic.

I'd rather be dead than dying.

I'd like to die with my boots on.

Well, I'm using a cane, so what? So what if they shot me sitting in a wheelchair? That's life!

You can really do amazing things in a wheelchair. It's very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, but you can even go up and down stairs in a wheelchair.