Quotes from Mitch Albom

It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.

There is a reason God limits man's days.

We all have the same beginning - birth - and we all have the same end - death. So how different can we be?

Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin.

The more you defend a lie, the angrier you become.

When you're rotten about yourself, you become rotten to everyone else, even those you love.

The little things, I can obey. 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.

So, have we solved the secret of happiness? I believe so, he said Are you going to tell me? Yes.Ready? Ready. Be satisfied. That's it? Be greatful. That's it? For what you have.For the love you receive.And for what God has given you. That's it? He looked me in the eye.Then he sighed deeply. That's it.

No matter how smart she appeared, she was fragile at her core.

Secrets tear you apart.

I am in love with Hope.

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.

But hurting ourselves to inflict pain on others is just another cry to be loved.

When death takes your mother, it steals that word forever.

You have to start over. That's what they say. But life is not a board game, and losing a loved one is never really starting over. More like continuing without.

Time, the Captain said, is not what you think. He sat down next to Eddie. Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning.

Be compassionate ... and take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be a better place.

There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things -he sighed- these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? Morrie Schwartz

There's a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need, Morrie said. You need food, you want a chocolate sundae. You have to be honest with yourself. You don't need the latest sports car, you don't need the biggest house. The truth is, you don't get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you satisfaction?...Offering others what you have to give...I don't mean money, Mitch. I mean your time. Your concern. Your storytelling. It's not so hard.

In college, I had a course in Latin, and one day the word divorce came up. I always figured it came from some root that meant divide. In truth, it comes from divertere, which means to divert. I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else.

But fates are connected in ways we don't understand.

I thought about the days i had handed over to a bottle..the nights i can't remember..the mornings i slept thru..all the time spent running from myself.

You knew me. You knew that person, but you don't know the person I'm trying to become... You are not your past!

The story of my recent life.' I like that phrase. It makes more sense than 'the story of my life', because we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality- and in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization.