Quotes from Mitch Albom

We do not realize the sound the world makes -- unless, of course, it comes to a stop. Then, when it starts, it sounds like an orchestra.

There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like.

You humans are always locking each other away. Cells. Dungeons. Some of your earliest jails were sewers, where men sloshed in their own waste. No other creature has this arrogance—to confine its own. Could you imagine a bird imprisoning another bird? A horse jailing a horse? As a free form of expression, I will never understand it. I can only say that some of my saddest sounds have been heard in such places. A song inside a cage is never a song. It is a plea.

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.

Knowing heaven is what heals us on earth.

Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves. Forgive, Edward. Forgive...no one is born with anger. And when we die, the soul is freed of it. But now, here, in order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did, and why you no longer need to feel it.' She touched his hand. 'You need to forgive your father.

In every artist's life, there comes a person who lifts the curtain on creativity. It is the closest you come to seeing me again. The first time, when you emerge from the womb, I am a brilliant color in the rainbow of human talents from which you choose. Later, when a special someone lifts the curtain, you feel that chosen talent stirring inside you, a bursting passion to sing, paint, dance, bang on drums. And you are never the same.

To these people, unhappiness was a condition, an intolerable state of affairs. If pills could help, pills were taken. But pills were not going to change the fundamental problem in the construction. Wanting what you can´t have. Looking for self-worth in the mirror. Layering work on top of work and still wondering why you weren´t satisfied - before working some more.

and that is what heaven is for, for understanding your life on Earth.

To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That's better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you're living.

Had he known his death was imminent, he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he did what we all do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in the world were still to come.

Before you measure the years, you measure the days.

but then she did. she died. no more visits, no more phone calls. And without even realizing it, I began to drift, as if my roots had been pulled, as if I were floating down some side branch of a river.

Mothers support certain illusions about their children, and one of my illusions was that I liked who I was, because she did. When she passed away, so did that idea.

I shot you, all right, he said, and you lost something, but you gained something as well. You just don't know it yet. I gained something, too. What? I got to keep my promise. I didn't leave you behind.

Sitting high above the city, Father Time realized that knowing something and understanding it were not the same thing.

You don't know how to live until you learn how to die.

For many of us, the curtain had just come down on childhood.

It is too late. The old man shook his head. It is never too late or too soon. It is when it is supposed to be. He smiled. There is a plan, Dor.

It was sad, the imbalance of it all. Why do kids assume so much from one parent and hold the other to a lower, looser standard?

There is a reason you glance up when you first hear a melody, or tap your foot to the sound of a drum. All humans are musical. Why else would the Lord give you a beating heart?

There is a time for hello and a time for good-bye. It's why the act of burying things seems natural, but the act of digging them up does not.

This is the story of a man named Eddie and it starts at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It may seem strange to start a story with and ending, but all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.

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.