Mitch Albom

“No matter how smart she appeared, she wasfragile at her core.”

“He thought about his son’s stone flying across the yard, the youthful idea that you could toss away the future ifyou didn’t like it—and he realized, suddenly, what he needed to do.”

“What was the constant?Movement. Yes. With time there was always movement. The setting sun. The dripping water. Thependulums. The spilling sand. To realize his destiny, such movement had to cease. He had to stop the flowof time completely …”

“It is never too late or too soon, the old man had said. It is when it is supposed to be.”

“Knowing something and understanding it were not the same thing.”

“Dor came from a time before the written word, a timewhen if you wished to speak with someone, you walked to see them. This time was different. The tools ofthis era—phones, computers—enabled people to move at a blurring pace. Yet despite all theyaccomplished, they were never at peace. They constantly checked their devices to see what time it was—the very thing Dor had tried to determine once with a stick, a stone, and a shadow.”

“A heart weighs more when it splits in two; it crashes in the chest like a broken plane.”

“But you grab a moment, or you let it pass.”

“He did not know that the child who had asked for yesterday was now seeking to own tomorrow.”

“He wondered how it was fair that your dying should depend so much on when you were born.”

“It's the same thing with faith, by the way." We don't want to get stuck having to go to services all the time, or having to follow all the rules. We don't want to commit to God. We'll take Him when we need Him, or when things are going good. But real commitment? That requires staying power‎-‎-‎-in faith and in marriage."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.”

“Much of what we called "depression" was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.”

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

“When we are most alone is when we embrace another's loneliness.”

“He almost told her everything right then, that very moment. But you grab a moment, or you let it pass. He let it pass.”

“Please, please, please, please, please...,", squeezing his eyes shut because it somehow made the words more pure.”

“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.”

“Please do not leave me, he thought. He could not bear a world without Alli. He realized how much he relied on her from morning until night. She was his only conversation. His only smile. She prepared their meager food and always offered it to him first, even though he insisted she eat before he did. THey leaned on each other at sunsets. Holding her as they slept felt like his last connection to humanity.”

“Once, lovers on faraway shores sat by candlelight and dipped ink to parchment, writing words that could not be erased. They took an evening to compose their thoughts, maybe the next evening as well.”

“He was doing what a man does when left with nothing. He was telling himself his own life story.”

“When you're an outcast, even a tossed stone can be cherished.”

“With his power over time, Dor could have taken anything he desired from this new world. But a man who can take anything will find most things unsatisfying.”

“When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”

“once we began to chime the hour, we lost the ability to be satisfied”

“There is a reason God limits man's days.”

“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself..”

“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. -Blue Man”

“Common sense would have told Sarah to steer clear of Ethan's waters. But common sense has no place in first love and never has.”

“Man invents nothing God did not create first.”

“At that moment i felt lonelier than i'd ever felt before, and that loneliness seemed to squat in my lungs and crush all but my most minimal breathing. There was nothing left to say. Not about this. Not about anything.”

“You were one person, and you changed the world.”

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

“Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person i want to be? Is today the day I die?”

“Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I read? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person i want to be?'" He turned his head to his shoulder as if the bird were there now. "Is today the day I die?" he said.”

“He wrote bite-sized philosophies about living with death's shadow: "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.”

“Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creatures endures. A fear of time running out.”

“His plans never worked out. In time,he found himself graying and wearing looser pants and in a state of weary acceptance, that this was who he was and who he would always be, a man with sand in his shoes in a world of mechanical laughter”

“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's such a big world," She'd say wistfully. "Something is always happening somewhere.”

“Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour? It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time. When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”

“There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between summers was gone.”

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

“A man who can take anything will find most things unsatisfying. And a man without memories is just a shell.”

“Sometimes, when you are not getting the love you want, giving makes you think you will.”

“Mankind is connected in ways it does not understand - even in dreams.”

“As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart. People fretted over missed chances, over inefficient days; they worried constantly about how long they would live, because counting life’s moments had led, inevitably, to counting them down. Soon, in every nation and in every language, time became the most precious commodity.”

“Soon man will count all his days, and then smaller segments of the day, and then smaller still—until the counting consumes him, and the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.”

“Before you measure the years, you measure the days.”

“As children grow, they gravitate to their fates.”

“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.”