Quotes from Mitch Albom

What you're thinking about can be what you become.

Fear is how you lose your life . . . a little bit at a time. . . . What we give to fear, we take away from . . . faith.

He opened his eyes. He exhaled. You know what the Buddhists say? Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent.

Doubt is how you find God

An education is everything, Charley. An education is how you'll make something of yourself.

He tells me I need to be "fully human." He speaks of the alienation of youth and the need for "connectedness" with the society around me.

People are only mean when they're threatened," he said later that day, "and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. 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.

Amazing, I thought. I worked in the news business. I covered stories where people died. I interviewed grieving family members. I even attended the funerals. I never cried. Morrie, for the suffering of people half a world away, was weeping. Is this what comes at the end, I wondered? Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.

I buried myself in accomplishments, because with accomplishments, I believed I could control things, I could squeeze in every last piece of happiness before I got sick and died.. which I figured was my natural fate.

Guardar a raiva é envenenar-se. Ela nos consome por dentro. A gente costuma pensar que o ódio é uma arma contra a pessoa que nos fez mal. Mas a lâmina do ódio é curva. E o mal que fazemos com ele, nós fazemos a nós mesmos.

I still don't understand, Eddie whispered. What good came from your death? You lived, the Blue Man answered. But we barely knew each other. I might as well have been a stranger....Strangers, the Blue Man said, are just family you have yet to come to know.

Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from 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.

The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Let it come in. We think we don't deserve love, we think if we let it in we'll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, 'Love is the only rational act.

The genius of life is its variety.

You are born into your first one. Your mother plays the lead. She shares the stage with your father and siblings. Or perhaps your father is absent, an empty stool under a spotlight. But he is still a founding member, and if he surfaces one day, you will have to make room for him.

Maybe that's worse, not letting ourselves be loved. Because we're too afraid of giving ourselves to someone we might lose.

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.

It's the blending of the different notes that makes the music.

Love each other or perish.' 

If you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.

And slowly a discussion begins—as Morrie has wanted all along—about the effect of silence on human relations. Why are we embarrassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise? I am not bothered by the silence. For all the noise I make with my friends, I am still not comfortable talking about my feelings in front of others—especially not classmates. I could sit in the quiet for hours if that is what the class demanded.

The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own. "But believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning—birth—and we all have the same end—death. So how different can we be?

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

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. This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for.