Mitch Albom

but then she did. she died. no more visits, no more phone calls. And without even realizing it, I began to drift, as if my roots had been pulled, as if I were floating down some side branch of a river.

Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive, that you understand going to die, and you live a better life because of it.

Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.

In stories about life after death, the soul often floats above the good-bye 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.

"After the Israelites safely crossed the Red Sea, the Egyptians chased after them and were drowned. God's angels wanted to celebrate the enemy's demise.
God saw this and grew angry. He said, in essence, 'Stop celebrating. For those were my children,too.”

"What do you think of that?" the teacher asks us.

Someone else answers. But I know what I think. I think it is the first time I've heard that God might love the "enemy" as well as us."

Beginnings and endings are earthly ideas. I go on. And because I go on, you go on with me. Feeling loss is part of why you are on Earth. Through it, you appreciate the brief gift of human existence, and you learn to cherish the world I created for you. But the human form is not permanent. It was never meant to be. That gift belongs to the soul. “I know the tears you shed, Benjamin. When people leave this Earth, their loved ones always weep.” She smiled. “But I promise you, those who leave do not.

Every life has one true love snapshot.

What in life can love not penetrate? Mabel Hubbard, deaf since childhood, gave Alexander Bell a piano as a wedding gift and asked that he play it for her every day, as if his music could pierce her silence. Decades later, at Bell’s deathbed, it was his wife who made the sounds, saying the words, “Don’t leave me,” while he, no longer able to talk, used sign language to answer, No.

Most of us all 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.

Ain't you supposed to have peace when you die?'
You have peace,' the old woman said, 'when you make it with yourself.

"Begitu kita ingin tahu bagaimana kita akan mati, berarti kita belajar tentang bagaimana kita harus hidup" (hal 87, Selasa Bersama Morrie)

"Life goes quickly, doesn't it, Charley?"
"Yeah," I mumbled.
"It's such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it."

Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.

"Mitch, I don't allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each morning, a few tears, and that's all."
I thought about all the people I knew who spent many of their waking hours feeling sorry for themselves. How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few minutes, then on with the day. And if Morrie could do it, with such a horrible disease . . .

intentions. That’s important in music, too. Critically important. What you’re thinking about can be what you become.