Mitch Albom Quotes

Detroit is a place where we've had it pretty tough. But there is a generosity here and a well of kindness that goes deep.

The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.

You marked the minutes," the old man said. "But did you use them wisely? To be still? To cherish? To be grateful? To lift and be lifted?

A long time. Right on time. Out of time. Mind the time. Be on time. Spare time. Keep time. Stall for time.
There are as many expressions with "time" as there are minutes in a day.
But once, there was no word for it at all. Because no one was counting.

Be satisfied. Be grateful. For what you have. For what the love you received. And for what God has given you

I was stunned at how easily things went on without me

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.

Love each other or die.

The classroom as a living, breathing place. They chose discussions over lectures, experience over theory. They sent students to the Deep South for civil rights projects and to the inner city for fieldwork. They went

Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it.

There are five people you meet in heaven," the Blue Man suddenly said. "Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.

There is no fair in life and death. If it were, no good men would die young.

Consider the word "time." We use so many phrases with it. Pass time. Waste time. Kill time. Lose time. In good time. About time. Take your time. Save time. A long time. Right on time. Out of time. Mind the time. Be on time. Spare time. Keep time. Stall for time. There are as many expressions with "time" as there are minutes in a day. But once, there was no word for it at all. Because no one was counting. Then Dor began. And everything changed.

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.

Each time we talk, he listens to me ramble, then he tries to pass on some sort of life lesson.
He warns me that money is not the most important thing, contrary to the popular view on campus.
He tells me I need to be "fully human."
He speaks of the alienation of youth and the need for "connectedness" with the society around me.

Living without love was
something he knew more about than any
soul on Earth. The more Sarah spoke of
loneliness, the clearer it became why he
was there.

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.

Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers.

Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's also the positive, that you understand going to die, and you live a better life because of it.

There is nothing more fun than hanging around with friends and banging on instruments. Anyone who has ever done it knows that this is true.

Listen. You should know something. All younger people should know something. If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow.

Take any emotion - love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. "But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment'.

You're not getting it," Eddie gently replied. "I needed to save you. It let me make up for the life I took. That's how salvation works. The wrongs we do open doors to do right.

Everyone joins a band in this life. And what you play always affects someone. Sometimes, it affects the world.

Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can't explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.

"And no matter how far they try to go the other way – to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty – at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When the life comes to an end?"

I shrugged.

"You see?"

He leaned back. He smiled.

"When you come to the end, that's where God begins.

The day he learned that he was terminally ill was the day he lost interest in his purchasing power.

We fear loneliness, Annie, but loneliness itself does not exist. It has no form. It is merely a shadow that falls over us. And Just as shadows die when light changes, the sadness can depart once we see the truth."

"What's the truth?" Annie asked.

"That the end of loneliness is when someone needs you." The old woman smiled. "And the world is so full of need.

Remember me for these days, not the old ones.

Going back to something is harder than you think.

Love wins, love always wins.

She says everyone you lose here, you find again there. Our family is all together. Her. My parents.

Counting life's moments had led, inevitably, to counting them down.

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.

He was intent on proving that the word 'dying' was not synonymous with 'useless'.

It is 1979, a basketball game in the Brandeis gym. The team is doing well, and the student section begins a chant, "We're number one! We're number one!" Morrie is sitting nearby. He is puzzled by the cheer. At one point, in the midst of "We're number one!" he rises and yells, "What's wrong with being number two?" The students look at him. They stop chanting. He sits down, smiling and triumphant.

I don't know about Heaven or Hell, but I do know that we are visited all the time by the spirits of those who affected us in life.

A teacher's shadow can hover for life.

We all lose somebody we care about and want to find some comforting way of dealing with it, something that will give us a little closure, a little peace.

Finally, on the fourth of November, when those he loved had left the room just for a moment - to grab coffee in the kitchen, the first time none of them were with him since the coma began - Morrie stopped breathing.

There is a time for hello and a time for good-bye. It's why the act of burying thing seems natural, but the act of digging them up does not.

What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want
someone to notice she was there.

Learn what you do not know. Understand the consequences of counting the moments.

Sharing tales of those we've lost is how we keep from really losing them.

Dor shook his head. "The phrase. What does it mean?"
Sarah wondered if he was kidding. "Time flies? You know, like, time goes really fast and suddenly you're saying goodbye
and it's like no time passed at all?"
His eyes drifted. He liked it. "Time flies."
"With you," she added.

All humans are musical. Why else would the Lord give you a beating heart?

The truth is, there is no line. There's only your life, how you mess it up, and who is there to save you.
Or who isn't.

But the world does not cater to our timing.

You cannot unplay your notes. Time, like music, is indelible that way.

She cared. She gave a crap. When I lacked even the self-respect to keep myself alive, she dabbed my cuts and I fell back into being a son; I fell as easily as you fall into your pillow at night. And I didn't want it to end. That's the best way I can explain it. I knew it was impossible. But I didn't want it to end.

Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have.

It is too late."
The old man shook his head. "It is never too late or too soon. It is when it is supposed to be."
He smiled. "There is a plan, Dor.

Look and see, for everyone is coming home. Your sons are coming from distant lands; your little daughters will be carried on the hip. Your eyes will shine and your hearts will thrill with joy.

She hugged her arms around his chest and leaned her head into his shoulder. She did this every night, and like most small demonstrations of love, it had a large impact. Dor felt a surge of calm whenever she held him, like being wrapped in a blanket, and he knew no one else would ever love or understand him the way she did. He nestled his face into her long dark hair, and he breathed a way he never breathed except when he was with her.

Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.

I give myself a good cry if i need it. A little each morning, a few tears and that's all.

Are you seeing anyone romantically?" he inquired.
"No, I'm not," she replied.
"Good. Please keep it that way. Because I intend to ask you to marry me.

Is how you stay alive.

I don't mean you disregard every rule of your community. I don't go around naked, for example. I don't run through red lights. The little things, I can obey. But the big things- how we think, what we value- those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone-or any society- determine those for you. ' -Morrie Schwartz

You can't get stuck on what should have happened. That doesn't help you.

How do you let go of anger? How do you release a fury you've been standing on for so long, you would stumble if it were yanked away? As Sully sat in his old room, holding the letter, he felt himself lifting off from his bitterness, the way one lifts off in a dream. Elliot Gray, an enemy for so long, was now seen differently, a man forgivable for his mistake.

People in grief can imagine many things. It makes them feel better. It doesn't make it real.

I don't use any fance quill pens or pads, because I can't read my own handwriting. I just use whatever computer is laying around, and start writing.

You've lived through a lot of wars, I said.
"Yes."
Do they ever make more sense?
"No.

But there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begin.

Holding on to things only breaks your heart.

He would close his eyes and with a blissful smile begin to move to his own sense of rhythm. It wasn't always pretty. But then, he didn't worry about a partner. Morrie danced by himself.

We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.

Even God couldn't be that cruel.

Remember this, Francisco," he said. "The secret is not to make your music louder, but to make the world quieter.

Eddie told her he had made things square and her eyebrows lifted and her lips spread and Eddie felt and old, warm feeling he had missed for years, the simple act of making his wife happy

You can be a mama's boy, be a daddy's boy, but you can't be both. So you cling to the one you think you might lose.

Detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it.

One of my disciples, a lanky saxophonist named Sonny Rollins, played his horn for three years on a bridge in New York City, his tender jazz melodies wafting between the traffic noises. I would pause there often, on the girders, just to listen. Or

Strangers are family you haven't recognize yet

No matter how smart she appeared, she was
fragile at her core.

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

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.

But daughters have their own lives. You can't smother them. She'll get married. Have children.

You're never in love with anyone the way you are when you're eighteen,

Now. My turn. Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can't explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.

My friends, 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.

My mother was French Protestant, and my father was Italian Catholic, and their union was an excess of God, guilt and sauce.

How do people choose their final words? Do they realize their gravity? Are they fated to be wise?

And I suppose tapes are a desperate attempt to steal something from Death's suitcase.

With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can't appreciate what we have

A child embarrassed by his mother," she said, "is just a child who hasn't lived long enough.

Everyone joins a band in this life. One way or another, the band breaks up.

I had also developed my own culture. Work.
Over the years, I had taken labor as my companion and had moved everything else to the side.

It is no coincidence that the words 'trying' and 'dying' are only a few letters apart.

The bride waits here," she said, running her hands along her hair, taking in her image but seeming to drift away. "This is the moment you think about what you're doing. Who you're choosing. Who you will love. If it's right, Eddie, this can be such a wonderful moment.

A wind blew, and the sand around his drawing scattered. He wrapped his fingers inside his wife's, and Father Time rekindled a connection he had only ever had with her. He surrendered to that sensation and felt the final drops of their lives touch one another, like water in a cave, top meets bottom, Heaven meets Earth.
As their eyes closed, a different set of eyes opened, and they rose from the ground as a shared south, up and up, a sun and a moon in a single sky.

It was a cutthroat business, dog eat dog, the strong preying on the weak. In the lifestyle I was in, people were killed. It happened every day.

We cannot stop what Heaven chooses.

After the Israelites safely crossed the Red Sea, the Egyptians chased after them and were drowned. God's angels wanted to celebrate the enemy's demise.
God saw this and grew angry. He said, in essence, 'Stop celebrating. For those were my children,too."
"What do you think of that?" the teacher asks us.
Someone else answers. But I know what I think. I think it is the first time I've heard that God might love the "enemy" as well as us.

Faith is so important. It is a rope for us all to grab, up and down the mountain.

When your time came, it came, and that was that. You might say something smart on your way out, but you might just as easily say something stupid.

This is how talents weave from generation to generation, how the shadow stretches, and how an artist born nearly a hundred years earlier begins to fill the soul of a child who shares his name.

She explains that lost love is still love.Life has to end but love doesn't

Sacrifice," The Captain said. "You made one. I made one. We all make them. But you were angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost.
You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.

What if I lose you?" "You can't lose your mother, Charley.