Mitch Albom Quotes

Didn't people call New Year's the loneliest night on the calender? She took comfort in knowing somewhere on the planet, someone might be as miserable as she was.

You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue.

If you really want it, then you'll make your dream happen.

The secret is not to make your music louder. But to make the world quieter.

Memories are not in places, Papa. Memories are in your mind. They're here, too.

When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched, right? Like this?" He made a fist. "Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say, 'The whole world is mine.' "But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned his lesson." What lesson? I asked. He stretched open his empty fingers. "We can take nothing with us.

Now that child reminds me of something our sages taught. When a baby comes into the world, it's hands are clenched, right? Like this?"He made a fist."Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say 'The whole world is mine.'"But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned the lesson."What lesson? I asked.He stretched open his empty fingers."We can take nothing with us.

You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning. Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until sixty-five.

You have peace," the old woman said, "when you make it with yourself.

Had it not been for "Nightline," Morrie would have died without ever seeing me again. I had no good excuse for this, except the one that everyone these days seems to have. I had become too wrapped up in the siren song of my life. I was busy.

This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.

Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..What happened to me? I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.

I snicker, but the idea is momentarily appealing. Part of me is scared of leaving school. Part of me wants to go desperately. Tension of opposites.

I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought u wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else.

We are, as we die, who we most were in life...

Sometimes, kids want you to hurt the way they hurt.

There are many things in my life that I wish I could take back. Many moments I would recast.

I don't know what it is about food your mother makes for you, especially when it's something that anyone can make - pancakes, meat loaf, tuna salad - but it carries a certain taste of memory.

Belief, hard work, love–you have those things, you can do anything.

I think what you notice most when you haven’t been home in a while is how much the trees have grown around your memories.

I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.

Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.

The eighties happened. The nineties happened. Death and sickness and getting fat and going bald happened. I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realized I was doing it.

Life is a series of pulls back and forth... A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. Most of us live somewhere in the middle. A wrestling match...Which side win? Love wins. Love always wins

I [Music] was born in the open air, in the breaks of waves and the whistling of sandstorms, the hoots of owls and the cackles of tui birds. I travel in echoes. I ride the breeze. I was forged in nature, rugged and raw. Only man shapes my edges to make me beautiful. [Chapter 2]

You live on - in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here...Death ends life, not a relationship.

Have you found someone to share your heart with? Are you giving to your community? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you trying to be as human as you can be?

He cried that night for all that he had lost, but he would say it taught him a valuable lesson: that holding on to things "will only break your heart.

After all these months, lying there, unable to move a leg or a foot – how could he find perfection in such an average day?Then I realized that was the whole point.

But everyone knows someone who has died, I said. Why is it so hard to think about dying?'Because,' Morrie continued, 'most of us walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.'And facing death changes all that?'Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.'He sighed. 'Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.

My friedns, if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of 'I could have, I should have.' We can sleep in a storm. "And when it's time, our good-byes will be complete.

Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.

..And because he was still able to move his hands - Morrie always spoke with both hands waving - he showed great passion when explaining how you face the end of life.

And is often the case with faith, I thought I was being asked a favor, when in fact I was being given one".

Fear is how you lose your life...a little bit at a time...What we give to fear, we take away from...faith.

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives

when all this started, I asked myself, 'Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?'I decided I'm going to live---or at least try to live---the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.

He loved to smile. He avoided anger. He was never haunted by "Why am I here?" He knew why he was here, he said: to give to others, to celebrate God, and to enjoy and honour the world he was put in. His morning prayers began with "Thank you, Lord, for returning my soul to me." When you start that way, the rest of the day is a bonus.

Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?.. He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying.

The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone.

There is no experience like having children.’ That’s all. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.

Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.

I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.

ALS is like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and leaves your body a pile of wax.. you cannot support yourself standing.. you cannot sit up straight. By the end, if you are still alive.. your soul, perfectly awake, is imprisoned inside a limp husk.. like something from a science fiction movie, the man frozen inside his own flesh.

The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish’.

Personally, I always wondered about authors and celebrities who loudly declared there was no God. It was usually when they were healthy and popular and being listened to by crowds. What happens, I wondered, in the quiet moments before death? By then, they have lost the stage, the world has moved on. If suddenly, in their last gasping moments, through fear, a vision, a late enlightenment, they change their minds about God, who would know?

We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”And facing death changes that?"Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials.

Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.

You will never know all there is to know. You will learn until your final days. Then you will inspire someone else. This is what an artist does.

There are no random acts...We are all connected...You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind...

Because, from the beginning , God said, 'I'm gonna put this world into your hands. If I run everything, then that's not you.' So we were created with a piece of divinity inside us, but with this thing called free will, and I think God watches us everyday, lovingly, praying we will make the right choices.

The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves.

Tell me about your family," I said. And so she did. I listened intently as my mother went through each branch of the tree. Years later, after the funeral, Maria had asked me questions about the family - who was related to whom - and I struggled. I couldn't remember. A big chunk of our history had been buried with my mother. You should never let your past disappear that way.

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.

Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin.