Quotes by Mitch Albom

That was the end of his driving.. That was the end of his walking free.. That was the end of his privacy.. And that was the end of his secret.

The years after graduation hardened me into someone quite different from the strutting graduate.. headed for New York City, ready to offer the world his talent. The world, I discovered, was not all that interested. I wandered around my early twenties, paying rent and reading classifieds and wondering why the lights were not turning green for me.

ALS is like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and leaves your body a pile of wax.. you cannot support yourself standing.. you cannot sit up straight. By the end, if you are still alive.. your soul, perfectly awake, is imprisoned inside a limp husk.. like something from a science fiction movie, the man frozen inside his own flesh.

You will never know all there is to know. You will learn until your final days. Then you will inspire someone else. This is what an artist does.

The second death. To think that you died and no one would remember you. I wondered if this was why we tried so hard to make our mark in America. To be known. Think of how important celebrity has become. We sing to get famous; expose our worst secrets to get famous; lose weight, eat bugs, even commit murder to get famous. Our young people post their deepest thoughts on public web sites. They run cameras from their bedrooms. It’s as if we are screaming Notice Me! Remember Me! Yet the notoriety barely lasts. Names quickly blur and in time are forgotten.

I earned a maters degree in journalism and took the first job offered, as a sports writer. Instead of chasing my own fame, I wrote about famous athletes chasing theirs.

I was cranked to a fifth gear, and everything I did, I did on a deadline.

.. I thought about him now and then, the things he had taught me about being human and relating to others;, but it was always in the distance, as if from another life.. .. The people who might have told me were long forgotten, their phone numbers buried in some packed-away box in the attic.

You have peace, the old woman said, when you make it with yourself.

Morrie,” Koppel said, “that was seventy years ago your mother died. The pain still goes on?”“You bet,” Morrie whispered.

The secret is not to make your music louder. But to make the world quieter.

Silence enhances music. What you do not play can sweeten what you do. But it is not the same with words. What you do not say can haunt you.

I [Music] was born in the open air, in the breaks of waves and the whistling of sandstorms, the hoots of owls and the cackles of tui birds. I travel in echoes. I ride the breeze. I was forged in nature, rugged and raw. Only man shapes my edges to make me beautiful. [Chapter 2]

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?

One must indeed test the strings to this life, bounce the bow, wet the mouthpiece, prepare for the deeper music that follows.

You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.

when all this started, I asked myself, Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?I decided Im going to live---or at least try to live---the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.

I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means youll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldnt.

Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.

It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.