Mitch Albom
Sportswriter, novelist, newspaper columnist for the Detroit Free Press, syndicated radio host, and TV commentator.
"No life is a waste," the Blue Man said. "The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone."
"If we can remember the feeling of love we once had, we can die without ever going away."
"Love wins. Love always wins."
In the stories about life and death, the soul often floats above the goodbye moment, hovering over police cars at highway accidents, or clinging like a spider to hospital room ceilings. These are people who receive a second chance, who somehow, for some reason, resume their place in the world. Eddie, it appeared, was not getting a second chance.
Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to somebody else.
All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.
"Your voice will come. We all go through the same thing. You cannot talk when you first arrive." He smiled. "It helps you listen."
"As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you'd always be twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."
People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless.
"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."
It might have seemed ridiculous to anyone watching, this white-haired maintenance worker, all alone, making like an airplane. But the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets.
"You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning. Because if you’ve find meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward."
"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."
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.
"Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know."
"Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too - even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling."
"Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone."
"Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?"
"Don't hang on too long, but don't let go too soon."
"Love each other or perish."