Mitch Albom

“I took my orders, too. But if i couldn't keep you alive, I thought I could at least keep you together. In the middle of a big war, you go looking for a small idea to believe in. When you find one, you hold it the way a soldier holds his crucifix when he's praying in a foxhole.”

“People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless.”

“the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets.”

“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.”

“Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.”

“If the only thing wrong with Moses is that he's not yours; if the only thing wrong with Jesus is that he's not yours; if the only thing wrong with mosques, Lent, chanting, Mecca, Buddha, confession, or reincarnation is that they're not yours--well, maybe the problem is you.”

“God sings, we hum along, and there are many melodies, but it's all one song - one same, wonderful, human song.”

“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.”

“All parents damage their children. This was their life together. Neglect. Violence. Silence.”

“Love- the infatuation kind- 'he's so handsome, she's so beautiful'- that can shrivel. As soon as something goes wrong, that kind of love can fly out the window. ”

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

“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.”

“my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" from the book of Isaiah”

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

“A little girl came home from school with a drawing she'd made in class.She danced into the kitchen ,where her mother was preparing dinner."Mom,guess what ?" she squealed waving the drawing .her mother never looked up."what"? she said ,tending to the pots."guess what?" the child repeated ,waving the drawings."what?" the mother said , tending to the plates."Mom, you're not listening""sweetie,yes I am""Mom" the child said "you're not listening with your EYES”

“Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.”

“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.”

“I used to think I knew everything. I was a "smart person" who "got things done," and because of that, the higher I climbed, the more I could look down and scoff at what seemed silly or simple, even religion.But I realized something as I drove home that night: that I am neither better nor smarter, only luckier. And I should be ashamed of thinking I knew everything, because you can know the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-no matter how smart or accomplished-they cry, they yearn, they hurt.But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things:comfort, love, and a peaceful heart.”

“another family story is forges, one that father and son will laugh about for decades. This is how a legacy is built. One memory at a time.”

“The problem is that we don't believe that we are much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholic and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own.”

“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 vulnerability that loving entails.”

“People don’t die because of loyalty.”They don’t?” She smiled. “Religion? Government? Are we not loyal to such things, sometimes to the death?”Eddie shrugged.Better,” she said, “to be loyal to one another.”

“It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.”

“His father, who for years had refused to speak to Eddie, now lacked the strength to even try. He watched his son with heavy-lidded eyes. Eddie, after struggling to find even one sentence to say, did the only thing he could think of to do: He held up his hands and showed his father his grease-stained fingertips.”

“Sometimes during the night, your father awakened. He rose from his bed, staggered across the room, and found the strength to raise the window sash. He called your mother's name with what little voice he had, and he called yours, too, and your brother, Joe. And he called for Mickey. At that moment, it seemed, his heart was spilling out, all the guilt and regret. Perhaps he felt the light of death approaching. Perhaps he only knew you were all out there somewhere, in the streets beneath his window. He bent over the ledge. The night was chilly. The wind and damp, in his state, were too much. He was dead before dawn.”

“You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.”

“Your voice will come. We all go through the same thing. You cannot talk when you first arrive."He smiled. "It helps you listen.”

“It’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done.”

“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.”

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

“What's wrong with being number 2?”

“You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship”

“Napoleon once dismissed religion as 'what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.' Meaning, without the fear of God--or literally the hell we might have to pay--the rest of us would just take what we wanted.”

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

“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.”

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

“All I was afraid of is saying good-bye.”

“I HAVE A HEARTBURN AND DIAHREA AT THE MOMENT--LIFE'S ABITCH. CHAT LATER?[signed] SORE TUSH”

“Love each other or perish.”

“If you could pack for heaven, this was how you'd do it, touching everything, taking nothing.”

“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.”

“Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge. His thoughts still haunted him.”

“I know I cannot undo this. None of us can undo what we’ve done, or relive a life already recorded.”

“There is no formula to relationships.”

“I'm in love with hope.”

“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.”

“The manager once called me the 'best freak' in his stable, and, sad as it sounds, I took pride in that. When you are an outcast, even a tossed stone can be cherished.”

“You can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.”

“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.”

“People are only mean when they're threatened, and that's what our culture does...And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.”