Quotes from Mitch Albom

You can touch everything and be connected to nothing.

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

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.

Something is always happening somewhere.

You should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to say that we don't know everything. And since we don't know everything, we must accept that another person may believe something else.

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

Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.

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

Everyone is in such a hurry. People haven't found meaning in their lives, so they're running all the time looking for it. They think the next car, the next house, the next job. Then they find those things are empty, too, and they keep running. Once you start running, it's hard to slow yourself down.

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

There is no formula to relationships.

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

It's the thinking that gets you killed.

the words people do not speak are louder than the ones they do.

the pain we suffer is a way to make us appreciate what comes next.

Because we embrace our scars more than our healing. [...] We can recall the exact day we got hurt, but who remembers the day the wound was gone?

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

There is no experience like having children.' That's all. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.

But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.

Miracles happen quietly every day - in an operating room, on a stormy sea, in the sudden appearance of a road side stranger. They are rarely tallied. No one keeps score.

What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when you're so wrecked it's hard to believe you ever were a child?

What's wrong with being number 2?

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.

Now that child reminds me of something our sages taught. When a baby comes into the world, it's 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 the lesson. What lesson? I asked. He stretched open his empty fingers. We can take nothing with us.