Quotes from Mitch Albom

As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private vocabulary. Maybe you will flop on couches backstage, or share a boardroom table, or crowd around a galley inside a ship. But in each band you join, you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it.

Lost love is still love.

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?

Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won't hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, "All right, it's just fear, I don't have to let it control me. I see it for what it is.

You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.

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

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

We fear loneliness, Annie, but loneliness itself does not exist. It has no form. It is merely a shadow that falls over us. And just as shadows die when light changes, the sadness can depart once we see the truth. What's the truth? Annie asked. That the end of loneliness is when someone needs you. The old woman smiled. And the world is so full of need.

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

What you have done to this point cannot be undone. What you do next... It is still unwritten.

This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.

Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say 'I want mine now,' you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it.

I'm in love with hope.

I made the wrong choice , I whispered. My mother shook her head. A child should never have to choose.

The truth is, there is no line. There's only your life, how you mess it up, and who is there to save you. Or who isn't.

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

Life goes quickly, doesn't it?

Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.

You can be a mama's boy, be a daddy's boy, but you can't be both. So you cling to the one you think you might lose.

Have you found someone to share your heart with? Are you giving to your community? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you trying to be as human as you can be?

Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have.

When hope is gone, time is punishment.

The news of life is carried via telephone. A baby's birth, a couple engaged, a tragic car accident on a late night highway - most milestones of the human journey, good or bad, are foreshadowed by the sound of a ringing.

But you cannot change your past, no matter how you craft your future.