Mitch Albom Quotes

Secrets tear you apart.

Holding on to things only breaks your heart.

Remember me for these days, not the old ones.

When you're rotten about yourself, you become rotten to everyone else, even those you love.

You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.

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.

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

No matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be.

For years I wrote in my basement. More recently I graduated to one floor above, an office with all my books and music and - ta da! - a window.

When death takes your mother, it steals that word forever.

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.

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’.

The word 'commitment' has lost it's meaning. I'm old enough to remember when it used to be positive. A commited person was someone to be admired. He was loyal and steady. Now a commitment is something you avoid. You don't want to tie yourself down.

Don't let our outside labels or how fervent we look or zealous we are or how righteous we seem; that's not how you measure yourself against other people. Everyone is a child of God; if we really believed that, we'd treat each other better.

Accept who you are; and revel in it.

In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need others to survive, right?’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘But here’s the secret: in between, we need others as well.

Sometimes, questions are more hurtful than insults.

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

But our eyes are different, what you see ain't what I see.

She had been so consumed with escaping her own misery, she hadn't considered the misery she might inflict.

Sometimes, love brings you together even as life keeps you apart.

When a lost loved one appears before you, it's your brain that fights it, not your heart.

This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.

when he smiles it's as if you'd just told him the first joke on earth.

For better or for worse, I've watched people die in front of me. I see how they are in the end. And they're not cynical. In the end, they wanna hold somebody's hand. And that's real to me.

Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don't wait.

Every life has one true love snapshot.

Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all.

Things change when you're not in danger anymore.

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.

What do people fear most about death? I asked the reb. "Fear?" he thought for a moment. 'Well, for one thing, what happens next? Where do we go? Is it what we imagined?" That's big. "Yes. But there's something else." What else? He leaned forward. "Being forgotten," he whispered.

As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away.

Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own. Most people can't do it.

And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.

I would lying if I said I would laugh in the face of death.

We need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done. You can't get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened.

We’re gonna make up for that. We’re gonna live a long time together.

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.

I give myself a good cry if I need it, but then I concentrate on all good things still in my life.

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.

The story of my recent life.' I like that phrase. It makes more sense than 'the story of my life', because we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality- and in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization.

I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realized I was doing it.

...if you're trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down on you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.

Bad news has no limits. We often feel it should, like a rainstorm that can't possibly get any heavier. But a storm can always worsen, & the burdens of life can too.

Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.

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 they are my children,too.

In a newspaper, you only have so much room. It teaches you the value of getting to the point, of not pampering yourself with your glorious writing. I've always been much more interested in one powerful sentence that stays with you. That's my style.

Courage is confused with picking up arms and cowardness is confused with laying them down.