59. "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," he said. "Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

22. The story generates a prayer in me: "Lord, make me aware of the implications of any (any!) word I say to people during the course of the day. Who can know when a spoken word directs someone toward the right path ... or the wrong one?"

21. For the pastor, that brief exchange was likely incidental and forgettable. Yet it was a turning point that would point Steve Jobs toward eastern philosophy.

20. The pastor's answer badly underestimated the young teen's intellect and left him unsatisfied. According to Isaacson, Jobs walked away from the church that day and never returned.

19. "'Steve, I know you Don't understand, but yes, God knows about that.'"

18. "Jobs then pulled out the Life cover and asked, 'Well, does God know about this and what's going to happen to those children?'

17. "The pastor answers, 'Yes, God knows everything.'

16. Isaacson writes: "In July 1968 Life magazine published a shocking cover showing a pair of starving children in Biafra. Jobs took it to Sunday school and confronted the church's pastor, 'If I raise my finger, will God know which one I'm going to raise even before I do it?'

15. Unfortunately the same did not happen in his church experience. When Jobs was 13, he asked his pastor a simple (yet not so simple) question.

14. It's startling to realize that Steve Jobs might have ended up a social discard — a delinquent — had it not been for an observant teacher who suspected that she had an exceptional child in her classroom. Under her guidance Jobs quickly accelerated in his learning experiences. " I just wanted to learn and to please her," Jobs said, looking back on her efforts.

13. When Jobs began school, his parents and teachers soon discovered that he was a "problem child. "It showed in his rebelliousness, in his boredom with the curriculum, in his unwillingness to fit into ordinary classroom regimens. He resisted learning in the traditional cookie-cutter ways.