Quotes from Mitch Albom

Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do"; "Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it"; "Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others"; "Don't assume that it's too late to get involved.

None of us can undo what we've done, or relive a life already recorded.

Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overwhelmed with what comes back.

if i could have had another son, i would have liked it to be you

Holding him like that moved me in a way I cannot describe, except to say I felt the seeds of death inside his shrivelling frame, and as I laid him in his chair, adjusting his head on the pillows, I had the coldest realisation that our time was running out.

So many times, I had chosen not to be with her. Too busy. Too tires. Don't feel like dealing with it. Church? No thanks. Sinner? Sorry. Come down to visit? Can't do it, maybe next week.

He could not feel agony. He could not feel sadness. His consciousness felt smoky, wisplike, incapable of anything but calm

Nurses came to his house to work with Morrie's withering legs.. bending them back and forth as if pumping water from a well.. He met with meditation teachers, and closed his eyes and narrowed his thoughts until his world shrunk down to a single breath, in and out, in and out.

Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, 'Love each other or perish.' 

In the South American rainforest, there is a tribe called the Desana, who see the world as a fixed quantity of energy that flows between all creatures. Every birth must therefore engender a death, and every death bring forth another birth. This way, the energy of the world remains complete.

He was intent on proving that the word dying was not synonymous with useless.

How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then

Listen. You should know something. All younger people should know something. If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it will happen again any how.

But the world does not cater to our timing.

How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day.

He told his friends that if they really wanted to help him, they would treat him not with sympathy but with visits, phone calls, a sharing of their problems - the way they had always.. because Morrie had always been a wonderful listener.

I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don't let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don't say anything because we're frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.

There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, I'm so angry and bitter. But it doesn't last too long. Then I get up and say, 'I want to live...' So far, I've been able to do it. Will I be able to continue? I don't know. But I'm betting on myself that I will.

Cuando cae un rayo después de que te hayas ido, o se estrella un avión en el que podrías haber estado. Cuando tu compañero de trabajo enferma y tú no. Creemos que esas cosas son fortuitas, pero hay un equilibrio en todo. Uno se marchita, otro crece. El nacimiento y la muerte forman parte de un todo.

Life is a series of back and forth...' 'So which side wins, I ask?' 'Love wins. Love always wins.

If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing. Which is? Make peace with living.

Well, when people get married, they share the love of a couple. But when children arrive, they create another love, not just for the new additions, but for the new entity they have created. The family. It is not better than a couple's love, it's complementary, forged with a new appreciation, and a wider, expansive heart.

I wasn't there when you died. That's not your fault. I never said good-bye. Such a needless word, she said, when you love somebody.

But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.