Mitch Albom Quotes

It’s funny. I met a man once who did a lot of mountain climbing. I asked him which was harder, ascending or descending? He said without a doubt descending, because ascending you were so focused on reaching the top, you avoided mistakes. The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature,” he said. “You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.

If you really could fit God in a file, you wouldn't need to believe in God, you know, you'd just go get the file like a box of corn flakes off the shelf.

Fairness, does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young. ~ The blue man

Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.

Love each other or die.

Tears are okay [Morrie Schwartz]

There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? Morrie Schwartz

In heaven, there is no judgment, but rather an opportunity to examine our lives-who we touched, the choices we made, and the consequences of those choices.

It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there.

All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.

You count the hours you could have spent with your mother. It's a lifetime in itself.

To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That's better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you're living.

The universe is too grand and harmonious to believe it's all an accident.

Mothers support certain illusions about their children, and one of my illusions was that I liked who I was, because she did. When she passed away, so did that idea.

Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.

Death: the only true emotion felt in an apathetic world

And if you don´t commit? I asked. Your choice. But you miss what´s on the other side. What´s on the other side? "Ah" he smiled. "A happiness you cannot find alone

The second death. To think that you died and no one would remember you. I wondered if this was why we tried so hard to make our mark in America. To be known. Think of how important celebrity has become. We sing to get famous; expose our worst secrets to get famous; lose weight, eat bugs, even commit murder to get famous. Our young people post their deepest thoughts on public web sites. They run cameras from their bedrooms. It’s as if we are screaming Notice Me! Remember Me! Yet the notoriety barely lasts. Names quickly blur and in time are forgotten.

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

I believe the biggest themes of life are put into the best focus when held up against the very sharp light of mortality.

sometimes what you miss the most is the way a loved one made you feel about yourself.

The truth is, part of me is every age. I’m a three-year-old, I’m a five-year-old, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old, I’m a fifty-year-old. I’ve been through all of them, and I know what it’s like. I delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it’s appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own.

One day can bend your life.

I thought about the days i had handed over to a bottle..the nights i can't remember..the mornings i slept thru..all the time spent running from myself.

Getting old we can deal with. Being old is the problem

Sometimes you have to do things when sad things happen.

She was like a wound beneath an old bandage, and he had grown more used to the bandage.

My own father didn't talk a lot about feelings or emotions.

The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own. But believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning - birth - and we all have the same end - death. So how different can we be? Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you. Morrie Schwartz

You knew me. You knew that person, but you don't know the person I'm trying to become... You are not your past!

...the human spirit knows, deep down that all lives intersect.

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

Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do. Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it. Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others. Don't assume that it's too late to get involved.

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 heard even, you experience them fully and completely.

She loved me coming and going, at my worst and at my best. She had a bottomless well of love for me.

There is a reason God limits man's days.

I was a workaholic. I never stopped. I lived in fifth gear. I bought cars. I invested in stocks. I made more money than I had ever imagined.

A child embarrassed by his mother,” she said, “is just a child who hasn’t lived long enough.

That's what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays

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.

Knowing something and understanding it were not the same thing.

We're Tuesday people.

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped.

He had his time measures and he had her. That was his life. For as long as he could remember, it had been that way, Dor and Alli, even as children. "I do not want to die," she whispered. "You will not die." "I want to be with you." "You are.

No story sits by itself, Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.

Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.

With Marguerite, he wanted only time—more and more time—and he was granted it, nighttimes and daytimes and nighttimes again.

Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge.