Quotes by Mitch Albom

Loneliness was like an ogre hovering over those activities

I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we dont let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry.

No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.

Didnt people call New Years the loneliest night on the calender? She took comfort in knowing somewhere on the planet, someone might be as miserable as she was.

My funeral, the Blue Man said. Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should?It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesnt just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.It is why we are drawn to babies . . . He turned to the mourners. And to funerals.

Its very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed twenty-two, youd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. Its growth. Its more than the negative that youre going to die, its also the positive that you understand youre going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.

When youre rotten about yourself, you become rotten to everyone else, even thoseyou love.

What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when youre so wrecked its hard to believe you ever were a child?

But its hard to explain, Mitch. Now that Im suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims... and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I dont know any of these people. But--how can I put this?--Im almost... drawn to them.

She felt worthless and hollow. There was no hope of fixing this.And when hope is gone, time is punishment.

..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.

Then why do we do so many bad things?He sighed. “Because one thing God gave us—and I’m afraid it’s at times a little too much—is free will. Freedom to choose. I believe he gave us everything needed to build a beautiful world, if we choose wisely.

Thats what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays

I think people believe what they want to believe.

When you are an outcast, even a tossed stone can be cherished.

Learn this from me. 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.

There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, Im so angry and bitter. But it doesnt last too long. Then I get up and say, I want to live.. So far, Ive been able to do it. Will I be able to continue? I dont know. But Im betting on myself I will. Koppel seemed extremely taken with Morrie. He asked about the humility that death induced.

How do you let go of anger? How do you release a fury you’ve been standing on for so long, you would stumble were it yanked away?

I didnt want to be ordinary, I mumbled.My mother looked up. What ordinary, Charley?You know. Someone you forget.From the other room came the squeals of children. Miss Thelma turned her chin to the sound. She smiled,Thats what keeps me from being forgotten.

you must understand why you felt what you did, and why you no longer need to feel it