Mitch Albom Quotes - Page 5

Every family is a ghost story.

Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.

If you really want it, then you'll make your dream happen.

Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.

Heaven . . . is the same feeling. . . . No fear. No dark. When you know you are loved . . . that’s the light.

Sometimes, kids want you to hurt the way they hurt.

All who are born are always dying.

Because, from the beginning , God said, 'I'm gonna put this world into your hands. If I run everything, then that's not you.' So we were created with a piece of divinity inside us, but with this thing called free will, and I think God watches us everyday, lovingly, praying we will make the right choices.

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.

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. 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

Why are we embarassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise?

Remember me for these days, not the old ones.

For all that was happening to him, his voice was strong and inviting, and his mind was vibrating with a million thoughts. He was intent on proving that the word 'dying' was not synonymous with 'useless'.

If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your heard even, you experience them fully and completely.

But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.

I love you every day. And now I will miss you every day.

War could bond men like a magnet, but like a magnet it could repel them, too. The things they saw, the things they did. Sometimes they just wanted to forget.

I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.

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

Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.

If you accept that you can die at any time - then you might not be as ambitious as you are

I love you every day,Mom

Didn't people call New Year's the loneliest night on the calender? She took comfort in knowing somewhere on the planet, someone might be as miserable as she was.

If you don't have the support and love and caring and connection that you get from a family, you don't have much at all.

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.

Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.

Sharing tales of those we've lost is how we keep from really losing them.

Here's the thing," he said. "People see me as a bridge. I'm not as alive as I used to be, but I'm not yet dead. I'm sort of...in-between

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

The problem is that we don't believe that we are much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholic and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own.

Love- the infatuation kind- 'he's so handsome, she's so beautiful'- that can shrivel. As soon as something goes wrong, that kind of love can fly out the window.

I had told him I was searching for my keys, that's what had taken me so long in the car, and I squeezed him tighter, as if I could crush my little lie.

Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.

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.

..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.