Top 447 Quotes & Sayings by Mitch Albom

We all lose somebody we care about and want to find some comforting way of dealing with it, something that will give us a little closure, a little peace.

Sentiment is wherever you go.

You have to work at creating your own culture.

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.

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.

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

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

I seem to have very few casual readers, only passionate and appreciative ones.

A memoir should have some uplifting quality, inspiring or illuminating, and that's what separates a life story that can influence other people.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

For as spiritual as some people think my books are, I've never really dealt with religious things.

Got an hour or two? That's all it takes for one of my books.

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.

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

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

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

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

I've always said I have one skill. That skill - if I have it at all - is storytelling.

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

Anyone who tries to write a memoir needs to keep in mind that what's interesting to you isn't necessarily interesting to a reader.

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

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

I believe the biggest themes of life are put into the best focus when held up against the very sharp light of mortality.

Love each other or die.

I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages, sometimes I write them in a column, sometimes in a novel, sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself, 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'

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.

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.'

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.

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

Whenever you have two characters in a book, whether it's a novel or nonfiction, you run the risk that the reader is going to like one more than the other. They're going to read one chapter and say, 'I can't wait to get back to the other guy.'

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

But there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begin.

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.

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.

When someone is in your heart, they're never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times.

We need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done. You can't get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened.

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

It's such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.

You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.

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

There is no such thing as 'too late' in life.

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.

We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.

You have to start over. That's what they say. But life is not a board game, and losing a loved one is never really "starting over." More like "continuing without.

Don't cling to things because everything is impermanent.

Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.

the words people do not speak are louder than the ones they do.

Nothing haunts us like the things we don't say.

Accept who you are; and revel in it.

What you have done to this point cannot be undone. What you do next... It is still unwritten.

The secret to happiness...be satisfied and be grateful.

Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else.

All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.

The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.