Mitch Albom Quotes

At a certain point, your life is more about your legacy to your kids than anything else.
Mitch Albom
The backside of mountain is a fight against human nature," he said. "You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.
Mitch Albom
You count the hours you could have spent with your mother, it's a lifetime in itself.
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.
Mitch Albom
Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..What happened to me? I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.
Mitch Albom
There are many things in my life that I wish I could take back. Many moments I would recast.
Mitch Albom
You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning. Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until sixty-five.
Mitch Albom
One afternoon, I am complaining about the confusion of my age, what is expected of me versus what I want for myself.
Mitch Albom
I lifted my eyes, and, for the first time, admitted the truth."I gave up," I whispered."Don't give up," she whispered back.
Mitch Albom
It's the same thing with faith, by the way." We don't want to get stuck having to go to services all the time, or having to follow all the rules. We don't want to commit to God. We'll take Him when we need Him, or when things are going good. But real commitment? That requires staying power‎-‎-‎-in faith and in marriage."And if you don't commit? I asked."Your choice. But you miss what's on the other side."What's on the other side?"Ah." He smiled, "A happiness you cannot find alone.
Mitch Albom
I missed the crowds in those big stadiums, the flashbulbs, the roaring cheers - the majesty of the whole thing. I missed it bitterly. So did my father. We shared a thirst to return; unspoken, undeniable.
Mitch Albom
He was pitching to me before I could walk. He gave me wooden bat before my mother let me use scissors. He said I could make the major leagues one day if I had "a plan," and if I "stuck to the plan"Of course, when you're that young, you nest in your parents' plans, not your own.
Mitch Albom
I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving, caring souls. How many people can say that?
Mitch Albom
None of us can undo what we've done, or relive a life already recorded. But, ... there is no such thing as "too late" in life.
Mitch Albom
We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”And facing death changes that?"Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials.
Mitch Albom
The things you spend so much time on--all this work you do--might not seem as important. You might have to make room for some more spiritual things.
Mitch Albom
Miracles happen quietly every day—in an operating room, on a stormy sea, in the sudden appearance of a roadside stranger. They are rarely tallied. No one keeps score.But now and then, a miracle is declared to the world.And when that happens, things change
Mitch Albom
But my father, a thief in many ways, had robbed me of my concentration.
Mitch Albom
A wind blew, and the sand around his drawing scattered. He wrapped his fingers inside his wife's, and Father Time rekindled a connection he had only ever had with her. He surrendered to that sensation and felt the final drops of their lives touch one another, like water in a cave, top meets bottom, Heaven meets Earth.As their eyes closed, a different set of eyes opened, and they rose from the ground as a shared south, up and up, a sun and a moon in a single sky.
Mitch Albom
What happened to me? I asked myself. Morris's high, smoky voice took me back to my university years, when I thought rich people were evil, a shirt and tie were prison clothes, and life without freedom to get up and go - motorcycle beneath you, breeze in your face, down the streets of Paris, into the mountains of Tibet - was not a good life at all. What happened to me?
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
In the South American rainforest, there is a tribe called the Desana, who see the world as a fixed quantity of energy that flows between all creatures. Every birth must therefore engender a death, and every death brings forth another birth. This way, the energy of the world remains complete.When they hunt for food, the Desana know the animals they kill will leave a hole in the spiritual well. But that hole will be filled, they believe, by the Desana hunters when they die. Were there no men dying, there would be no birds or fish being born. I like this idea. Morrie likes it, too. The closer he gets to goodbye, the more he seems to feel we are all creatures in the same forest. What we take, we must replenish."It's only fair," he says.
Mitch Albom
Had it not been for "Nightline," Morrie would have died without ever seeing me again. I had no good excuse for this, except the one that everyone these days seems to have. I had become too wrapped up in the siren song of my life. I was busy.
Mitch Albom
I didn't want to forget him. Maybe I didn't want him to forget me.
Mitch Albom
I was astonished by his complete lack of self-pity. Morrie, who could no longer dance, swim, bathe, or walk; Morrie, who could no longer answer his own door, dry himself after a shower, or even roll over in bed. How could he be so accepting? I watched him struggle with a fork, picking at a piece of tomato, missing it the first two times - a pathetic scene, and yet I could not deny that sitting in his presence was almost magically serene, the same calm breeze that soothed me back in college.
Mitch Albom
You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning . Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until sixty-five.
Mitch Albom
He cried that night for all that he had lost, but he would say it taught him a valuable lesson: that holding on to things "will only break your heart.
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
the word dyting is not synonymous with the word useless
Mitch Albom
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
Mitch Albom
Ted," he said, "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 I'm going to live-or at least try to live-the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.
Mitch Albom
But everyone knows someone who has died, I said. Why is it so hard to think about dying?'Because,' Morrie continued, 'most of us walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.'And facing death changes all that?'Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.'He sighed. 'Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.
Mitch Albom
A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip.
Mitch Albom
He told his friends that if they really wanted to help him, they would treat him not with sympathy but with visits, phone calls, a sharing of their problems - the way they had always.. because Morrie had always been a wonderful listener.
Mitch Albom
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'.
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
After all these months, lying there, unable to move a leg or a foot – how could he find perfection in such an average day?Then I realized that was the whole point.
Mitch Albom
You live on - in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here...Death ends life, not a relationship.
Mitch Albom
We are, as we die, who we most were in life...
Mitch Albom
In a strange way, I envied the quality of Morrie's time even as I lamented its diminishing supply. Why did we bother with all the distractions we did?
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
This is the story of a man named Eddie and it starts at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It may seem strange to start a story with and ending, but all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.
Mitch Albom
Then he commandeered the floor, shooting back and forth like some hot Latin lover. When he finished, everyone applauded. He could have stayed in that moment forever.
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
Morrie was in a wheelchair full-time now, getting used to helpers lifting him like a heavy sack from the chair to the bed and the bed to the chair.
Mitch Albom
I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don't let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don't say anything because we're frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.
Mitch Albom
But then, I knew so little about my mother over the last decade of her life. I had been too wrapped up in my own drama.
Mitch Albom
Going back to something is harder than you think."I don't suppose I could have broken my mother's heart any more if I tried.
Mitch Albom
I love you every day,Mom
Mitch Albom
Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin.
Mitch Albom
Yet he refused to be depressed. Instead, Morrie had become a lightning rod of ideas.
Mitch Albom
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.
Mitch Albom
Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.
Mitch Albom
if you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you have different set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble.Your values must be alike. And the biggest of those values... the belief in the importance of your marriage.
Mitch Albom
Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.
Mitch Albom
Sometimes your kids will say the nastiest things, won't they, Rose? You want to ask,'Whose child is this?'"Rose chuckled."But usually, they're just in some kind of pain. They need to work it out.
Mitch Albom
You see, here's my theory: Kids chase the love that eludes them, and for me, that was my father's love. He kept it tucked away, like papers in a briefcase. And I kept trying to get in there.
Mitch Albom