Mitch Albom

If you really could fit God in a file, you wouldn't need to believe in God, you know, you'd just go get the file like a box of corn flakes off the shelf.

What is false about hope

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.

I used to be a classic workaholic, and after seeing how little work and career really mean when you reach the end of your life, I put a new emphasis on things I believe count more. These things include: family, friends, being part of a community, and appreciating the little joys of the average day.

Remember me for these days, not the old ones.

You're not a wave, you're a part of the ocean.

If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it's going to happen anyhow.

People often belittle the place where they were born.

A funeral is no place for secrets.

We all have two things in common, no matter who we are: We were born and we are going to die.

In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.

Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.

Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.

You have to work at creating your own culture.

I had a very high-grade publisher tell me I was incapable of writing a memoir.

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.

Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.

You can't get stuck on what should have happened. That doesn't help you.

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

The more you defend a lie, the angrier you become.

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.

I don't know about Heaven or Hell, but I do know that we are visited all the time by the spirits of those who affected us in life.

This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun.

When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this earth.

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.

Detroit is a place where weve had it pretty tough. But there is a generosity here and a well of kindness that goes deep.

Love each other or die.

I was a workaholic. I never stopped. I lived in fifth gear. I bought cars. I invested in stocks. I made more money than I had ever imagined.

I believe that you live on inside the hearts and minds of everyone you've touched while you were here on earth.

The news of life is carried via telephone. A baby's birth, a couple engaged, a tragic car accident on a late night highway - most milestones of the human journey, good or bad, are foreshadowed by the sound of a ringing.

With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have.

You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship

Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers.

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.

I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn't.

My own father didn't talk a lot about feelings or emotions.

For years I wrote in my basement. More recently I graduated to one floor above, an office with all my books and music and - ta da! - a window.

For better or for worse, I've watched people die in front of me. I see how they are in the end. And they're not cynical. In the end, they wanna hold somebody's hand. And that's real to me.

Mankind is connected in ways it does not understand even in dreams.

Desire sets our compass but real life steers our course.

You have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it.

Mortality means you don't have forever to work things out. You can live your life unexamined but then on the last day you're going to think: 'I've left things a little late.'

People who don't normally read make an exception for my books, possibly because they're short.

Sentiment is wherever you go.

When you look into your mother's eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this earth.

Fairness doesn't govern life and death. If it did, no good man would ever die young.

All endings are also beginnings. We just dont know it at the time.

If you are fully alive to the prospect of dying, you really start reprioritising your life.

Scenery without solace is meaningless.

People are only mean when they're threatened, and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does.

You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.

Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.

Detachment doesnt mean you dont let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary you let it penetrate you fully. Thats how you are able to leave it.

The human spirit knows deep down that all lives intersect.

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

You cant 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.

In a newspaper, you only have so much room. It teaches you the value of getting to the point, of not pampering yourself with your glorious writing. I've always been much more interested in one powerful sentence that stays with you. That's my style.

Sometimes you have to do things when sad things happen.

I would lying if I said I would laugh in the face of death.

Belief, hard work, love – you have those things, you can do anything.

Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?

Accept who you are and revel in it.

But a desperate heart will seduce the mind.

If youre always battling against getting older youre always going to be unhappy because it will happen anyhow.

Sometimes what you miss the most is the way a loved one made you feel about yourself.

We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.

Small towns are like metronomes; with the slightest flick, the beat changes.

This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.

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

This is part of what a family is about not just love. Its knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.