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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.

-Mitch Albom

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For Better Or For

Mitch Albom

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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.

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Once, Lovers On Faraway Shores Sat By Candlelight And Dipped Ink To Parchment, Writing Words That Could Not Be Erased. They Took An Evening To Compose Their Thoughts, Maybe The Next Evening As Well.

If We Tend To The Things That Are Important In Life, If We Are Right With Those We Love, And Behave In Line With Our Faith, Our Lives Will Not Be Cursed With The Aching Throb Of Unfulfilled Business. Our Words Will Always Be Sincere, Our Embraces Will Be Tight. We Will Never Wallow In The Agony Of ‘i Could Have, I Should Have’. We Can Sleep In A Storm. And When Its Time, Our Goodbyes Will Be Complete.

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.

Everyone Knows They Re Going To Die,' He Said Again, 'but Nobody Believes It. If We Did, We Would Do Things Differently.

Heaven Can Be Found In The Most Unlikely Corners.

But Our Eyes Are Different, What You See Ain't What I See.

A Child Embarrassed By His Mother,” She Said, “is Just A Child Who Hasn’t Lived Long Enough.

Never Tell A Child That Something It's Too Hard

I Lived," Dor Said, "but I Was Not Alive.

The Years After Graduation Hardened Me Into Someone Quite Different From The Strutting Graduate Who Left Campus That Day Headed For New York City, Ready To Offer The World His Talent. The World, I Discovered. Was Not All That Interested.

People Are Only Mean When They're Threatened, And That's What Our Culture Does...and When You Get Threatened, You Start Looking Out Only For Yourself. You Start Making Money A God. It Is All Part Of This Culture.

We All Yearn For What We Have Lost. But Sometimes, We Forget What We Have.

Death: The Only True Emotion Felt In An Apathetic World

People Are Only Mean When They're Threatened, And That's What Our Culture Does. That's What Our Economy Does.

There Is No Formula To Relationships. They Have To Be Negotiated In Loving Ways, With Room For Both Parties, What They Want And What They Need, What They Can Do And What Their Life Is Like.

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.

It's The Thinking That Gets You Killed.

Something Is Always Happening Somewhere.

Being Here In Detroit, Our Public Education In This City Is - It's Shocking. And The Oversight Of It And The Oversight Of The Teachers And The Funding Is Nonexistent, And The Priority That's Put On It Is So Low.

When He Smiles It's As If You'd Just Told Him The First Joke On Earth.

With Marguerite, He Wanted Only Time—more And More Time—and He Was Granted It, Nighttimes And Daytimes And Nighttimes Again.

Accept What You Are Able To Do And What You Are Not Able To Do.

Forgive Yourself

In Business People Negotiate To Win. They Negotiate To Get What They Want. Love Is Different. Love Is When You Are As Concerned About Someone Else's Situation As You Are About Your Own.

It’s Not Contagious, You Know. Death Is As Natural As Life. It’s Part Of The Deal We Made.

Everyone Is In Such A Hurry. People Haven’t Found Meaning In Their Lives, So They’re Running All The Time Looking For It. They Think The Next Car, The Next House, The Next Job. Then They Find Those Things Are Empty, Too, And They Keep Running. Once You Start Running, It’s Hard To Slow Yourself Down.

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.

At That Moment I Felt Lonelier Than I'd Ever Felt Before, And That Loneliness Seemed To Squat In My Lungs And Crush All But My Most Minimal Breathing. There Was Nothing Left To Say. Not About This. Not About Anything.

It's Amazing The Fantasies Your Mind Can Put Together.

People Say They 'find' Love, As If It Were An Object Hidden By A Rock. But Love Takes Many Forms, And It Is Never The Same For Any Man And Woman. What People Find Then Is A Certain Love. And [he] Found A Certain Love With [her], A Grateful Love, A Deep But Quiet Love, One That He Knew, Above All Else, Was Irreplaceable.

Bad News Has No Limits. We Often Feel It Should, Like A Rainstorm That Can't Possibly Get Any Heavier. But A Storm Can Always Worsen, & The Burdens Of Life Can Too.

Burdens Of Life

Try To Imagine A Life Without Timekeeping. You Probably Can’t. You Know The Month, The Year, The Day Of The Week. There Is A Clock On Your Wall Or The Dashboard Of Your Car. You Have A Schedule, A Calendar, A Time For Dinner Or A Movie. Yet All Around You, Timekeeping Is Ignored. Birds Are Not Late. A Dog Does Not Check Its Watch. Deer Do Not Fret Over Passing Birthdays. An Alone Measures Time. Man Alone Chimes The Hour. And, Because Of This, Man Alone Suffers A Paralyzing Fear That No Other Creature Endures. A Fear Of Time Running Out.

I Love You Every Day, Mom

The Manager Once Called Me The 'best Freak' In His Stable, And, Sad As It Sounds, I Took Pride In That. When You Are An Outcast, Even A Tossed Stone Can Be Cherished.

The Way You Get Meaning Into Your Life Is To Devote Yourself To Loving Others.

Man Wants To Own His Existence. But No One Owns Time.

You Can't Get Stuck On What Should Have Happened. That Doesn't Help You.

I Give Myself A Good Cry If I Need It. But Then I Concentrate On The Good Things Still In My Life. I Don't Allow Myself Any More Self-pity Than That. A Little Each Every Morning, A Few Tears, And That's All.

Getting Old We Can Deal With. Being Old Is The Problem

But My Father, A Thief In Many Ways, Had Robbed Me Of My Concentration.

Sometimes, Love Brings You Together Even As Life Keeps You Apart.

She Had Been So Consumed With Escaping Her Own Misery, She Hadn't Considered The Misery She Might Inflict.

I Think What You Notice Most When You Haven’t Been Home In A While Is How Much The Trees Have Grown Around Your Memories.

This Is The Greatest Gift God Can Give You: To Understand What Happened In Your Life. To Have It Explained. It Is The Peace You Have Been Searching For.

Everything Man Does Today To Be Efficient, To Fill The Hour? It Does Not Satisfy. It Only Makes Him Hungry To Do More. Man Wants To Own His Existence. But No One Owns Time.

That's What Heaven Is. You Get To Make Sense Of Your Yesterdays

The Most Important Elements Of Faith [are] Believing In Something Bigger Than Yourself, Taking Care Of Those Less Fortunate Than You.

No One Gets Left Behind, Remember?

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.

A Book With The Genuine Power To Stir And Comfort Its Readers.

The Secret To Happiness...be Satisfied And Be Grateful.

When I Lacked Even The Self-respect To Keep Myself Alive, She Dabbed My Cuts And I Fell Back Into Being A Son; I Fell As Easily As You Fall Into Your Pillow At Night. And I Didn't Want It To End. That's The Best Way I Can Explain It. I Knew It Was Impossible. But I Didn't Want It To End.

I Hope You Never Hear Those Words. Your Mom. She Died. They Are Different Than Other Words. They Are Too Big To Fit In Your Ears. They Belong To Some Strange, Heavy, Powerful Language That Pounds Away At The Side Of Your Head, A Wrecking Ball Coming At You Again And Again, Until Finally, The Words Crack A Hole Large Enough To Fit Inside Your Brain. And In So Doing, They Split You Apart.

Things That Happen Before You Are Born Still Affect You And People Who Come Before Your Time Affect You As Well.

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

For As Spiritual As Some People Think My Books Are, I've Never Really Dealt With Religious Things.

There's A Story Behind Everything..but Behind All Your Stories Is Always Your Mother's Story..because Hers Is Where Yours Begins.

Holding Anger Is A Poison. It Eats You From The 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. Forgive, Edward. Forgive...no One Is Born With Anger. And When We Die, The Soul Is Freed Of It. But Now, Here, In Order To Move On, You Must Understand Why You Felt What You Did, And Why You No Longer Need To Feel It.' She Touched His Hand. 'you Need To Forgive Your Father.' ~pgs 141-142

Going Back To Something Is Harder Than You Think.

I Took My Orders, Too. But If I Couldn't Keep You Alive, I Thought I Could At Least Keep You Together. In The Middle Of A Big War, You Go Looking For A Small Idea To Believe In. When You Find One, You Hold It The Way A Soldier Holds His Crucifix When He's Praying In A Foxhole.

I Know I Cannot Undo This. None Of Us Can Undo What We’ve Done, Or Relive A Life Already Recorded.

Fear Is How You Lose Your Life...a Little Bit At A Time...what We Give To Fear, We Take Away From...faith.

For Many Of Us, The Curtain Had Just Come Down On Childhood.

He Did Not Know That The Child Who Had Asked For Yesterday Was Now Seeking To Own Tomorrow.

Status Will Get You Nowhere. Only An Open Heart Will Allow You To Float Equally Between Everyone.

Death Doesn't Just Take Someone, It Misses Someone Else, And In The Small Distance Between Being Taken And Being Missed, Lives Are Changed.

Missing Someone

Taffy. He Thinks About Taffy. He Thinks It Would Take His Teeth Out Now, But He Would Eat It Anyhow, If It Meant Eating It With Her.

I Always Look For A "rhythm" In My Writing. A Cadence To The Sentences. Sometimes I Think Of Pieces I Write In A Song Writing Infrastructure - I.e., A Verse, A Chorus That I Return To, A Bridge That's Something Differenct, A Chorus That I Return To.

It's Such A Shame To Waste Time. We Always Think We Have So Much Of It.

The Fact Is, There Is No Foundation, No Secure Ground, Upon Which People May Stand Today If It Isn’t The Family. If You Don’t Have The Support And Love And Caring And Concern That You Get From A Family, You Don’t Have Much At All. Love Is So Supremely Important. As Our Great Poet Auden Said, ‘love Each Other Or Perish’.

Support And Love

Every Life Has One True Love Snapshot.

God Sings, We Hum Along, And There Are Many Melodies, But It's All One Song - One Same, Wonderful, Human Song.

We All Know How To Be A Child.

There Are No Random Acts.

You've Lived Through A Lot Of Wars, I Said. "yes." Do They Ever Make More Sense? "no.

You're Not Listening With Your Eyes.

Miracles Happen Quietly Every Day - In An Operating Room, On A Stormy Sea, In The Sudden Appearance Of A Road Side Stranger. They Are Rarely Tallied. No One Keeps Score.

You Have Peace," The Old Woman Said, "when You Make It With Yourself.

The Backside Of A Mountain Is A Fight Against Human Nature. You Have To Care As Much About Yourself On The Way Down As You Did On The Way Up.

Did You Feel Guilty Cursing God--you, Of All People?' No,' He Said. 'because Even In Doing So, I Was Recognizing There Was A Greater Power Than Me.' He Paused. And That Is How I Began To Heal.

You Have One Family, Charley. For Good Or Bad. You Have One Family. You Can’t Trade Them In. You Can’t Lie To Them. You Can’t Run Two At Once, Substituting Back And Forth. “sticking With Your Family Is What Makes It A Family.

There Is No Fair In Life And Death. If It Were, No Good Men Would Die Young.

All That Happens When Your Dreams Come True Is A Slow, Melting Realization That It Wasn't What You Thought.

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.

Losing A Loved One

You Say You Should Have Died Instead Of Me. But During My Time On Earth, People Died Instead Of Me, Too. It Happens Every Day. When Lightning Strikes A Minute After You Are Gone, Or An Airplane Crashes That You Might Have Been On. When Your Colleague Falls Ill And You Do Not. We Think Such Things Are Random. But There Is A Balance To It All. One Withers, Another Grows. Birth And Death Are Part Of A Whole.

When Death Takes Your Mother, It Steals That Word Forever.

Money Is Not A Substitute For Tenderness, And Power Is Not A Substitute For Tenderness.

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.

I Am In Love With Hope.

Be Compassionate," Morrie Whispered. And Take Responsibility For Each Other. If We Only Learned Those Lessons, This World Would Be So Much Better A Place." He Took A Breath, Then Added His Mantra: "love Each Other Or Die.

I Made The Wrong Choice ," I Whispered. My Mother Shook Her Head. "a Child Should Never Have To Choose.

Don't Get Too Attached To Anything.

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.

The Story Of My Recent Life.' I Like That Phrase. It Makes More Sense Than 'the Story Of My Life', Because We Get So Many Lives Between Birth And Death. A Life To Be A Child. A Life To Come Of Age. A Life To Wander, To Settle, To Fall In Love, To Parent, To Test Our Promise, To Realize Our Mortality- And In Some Lucky Cases, To Do Something After That Realization.

Have You Found Someone To Share Your Heart With? Are You Giving To Your Community? Are You At Peace With Yourself? Are You Trying To Be As Human As You Can Be?

The Second Death. To Think That You Died And No One Would Remember You. I Wondered If This Was Why We Tried So Hard To Make Our Mark In America. To Be Known. Think Of How Important Celebrity Has Become. We Sing To Get Famous; Expose Our Worst Secrets To Get Famous; Lose Weight, Eat Bugs, Even Commit Murder To Get Famous. Our Young People Post Their Deepest Thoughts On Public Web Sites. They Run Cameras From Their Bedrooms. It’s As If We Are Screaming Notice Me! Remember Me! Yet The Notoriety Barely Lasts. Names Quickly Blur And In Time Are Forgotten.

When You're Rotten About Yourself, You Become Rotten To Everyone Else, Even Those You Love.

I Made Such A Fool Of Myself,” She Lamented. “love Does Not Make You A Fool.” “he Didn’t Love Me Back.” “that Does Not Make You A Fool, Either.” “just Tell Me …” Her Voice Cracked. “when Does It Stop Hurting?” “sometimes Never.

Belief, Hard Work, Love–you Have Those Things, You Can Do Anything.

You Have To Work At Creating Your Own Culture.

Learn What You Do Not Know. Understand The Consequences Of Counting The Moments.

Life Goes Quickly, Doesn't It?

Dor: There Is A Reason God Lmits Our Days. Victor: Why? Dor: To Make Each One Precious.

What's Wrong With Being Number 2?

It Was Sad, The Imbalance Of It All. Why Do Kids Assume So Much From One Parent And Hold The Other To A Lower, Looser Standard?

My Mother Was French Protestant, And My Father Was Italian Catholic, And Their Union Was An Excess Of God, Guilt And Sauce.

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.

Dor Shook His Head. “the Phrase. What Does It Mean?” Sarah Wondered If He Was Kidding. “time Flies? You Know, Like, Time Goes Really Fast And Suddenly You’re Saying Goodbye And It’s Like No Time Passed At All?” His Eyes Drifted. He Liked It. “time Flies.” “with You,” She Added.

Chicago Keeps Getting All These Complete Games. Im Expecting 50 Cent Hot Dogs.

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.

Things Change When You're Not In Danger Anymore.

We All Have Two Things In Common, No Matter Who We Are: We Were Born And We Are Going To Die.

Critics Have A Problem With Sentimentality. Readers Do Not. I Write For Readers.

Don't Cling To Things, Because Everything Is Impermanent... But Detachment Doesn't Mean You Don't Let The Experience Penetrate You. On The Contrary, You Let It Penetrate You Fully. That's How You Are Able To Leave It...you're Afraid Of The Pain, You're Afraid Of The Grief... But By Throwing Yourself Into These Emotions, By Allowing Yourself To Dive In, All The Way, Over Your Head Even, You Experience Them Fully And Completely.you Know What Pain Is. You Know What Love Is. "all Right. I Have Experienced That Emotion. I Recognize That Emotion. Now I Need To Detach From That Emotion For A Moment.

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.

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.

Giving To Other People Makes Me Feel Alive. Not My Car Or My House. Not What I Look Like In The Mirror. When I Give My Time, When I Can Make Someone Smile After They Were Feeling Sad.

Mankind Is Connected In Ways It Does Not Understand - Even In Dreams.

It's Always Difficult To Watch Someone You Love Die.

Someone You Love

Because One Thing God Gave Us- And I'm Afraid It's At Times A Little Too Much- Is Freewill. Freedom To Choose. I Believe He Gave Us Everything Needed To Build A Beautiful World, If We Choose Wisely.

It Is No Coincidence That The Words 'trying' And 'dying' Are Only A Few Letters Apart.

"you Marked The Minutes," The Old Man Said. "but Did You Use Them Wisely? To Be Still? To Cherish? To Be Grateful? To Lift And Be Lifted?"

But Common Sense Has No Place In First Love And Never Has.

My Father Moved Through Theys Of We, Singing Each New Leaf Out Of Each Tree, (and Every Child Was Sure That Spring Danced When She Heard My Father Sing).

I Believe That You Live On Inside The Hearts And Minds Of Everyone You've Touched While You Were Here On Earth.

Accept Who You Are; And Revel In It.

What If I Lose You?" "you Can't Lose Your Mother, Charley.

Have You Ever Really Had A Teacher? One Who Saw You As A Raw But Precious Thing, A Jewel That, With Wisdom, Could Be Polished To A Proud Shine?

Tuesdays With Morrie

In Order To Move On, You Must Understand Why You Felt What You Did And Why You No Longer Need To Feel It.

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.

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.

There Is Nothing More Fun Than Hanging Around With Friends And Banging On Instruments. Anyone Who Has Ever Done It Knows That This Is True.

What Is It About Childhood That Never Lets You Go, Even When You're So Wrecked It's Hard To Believe You Ever Were A Child?

To These People, Unhappiness Was A Condition, An Intolerable State Of Affairs. If Pills Could Help, Pills Were Taken. But Pills Were Not Going To Change The Fundamental Problem In The Construction. Wanting What You Can´t Have. Looking For Self-worth In The Mirror. Layering Work On Top Of Work And Still Wondering Why You Weren´t Satisfied - Before Working Some More.

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.

Tuesdays With Morrie

Sometimes What You Miss The Most Is The Way A Loved One Made You Feel About Yourself.

The Truth Is, There Is No Line. There's Only Your Life, How You Mess It Up, And Who Is There To Save You. Or Who Isn't.

Silence Is Worse When You Know It Won't Be Broken.

You're Not A Wave, You're A Part Of The Ocean.

Look, No Matter Where You Live, The Biggest Defect We Human Beings Have Is Our Shortsightedness. We Don’t See What We Could Be. We Should Be Looking At Our Potential, Stretching Ourselves Into Everything We Can Become. But If You’re Surrounded By People Who Say ‘i Want Mine Now,’ You End Up With A Few People With Everything And A Military To Keep The Poor Ones From Rising Up And Stealing It.

When A Lost Loved One Appears Before You, It's Your Brain That Fights It, Not Your Heart.

Tell Me About Your Family," I Said. And So She Did. I Listened Intently As My Mother Went Through Each Branch Of The Tree. Years Later, After The Funeral, Maria Had Asked Me Questions About The Family - Who Was Related To Whom - And I Struggled. I Couldn't Remember. A Big Chunk Of Our History Had Been Buried With My Mother. You Should Never Let Your Past Disappear That Way.

...if You're Trying To Show Off For People At The Top, Forget It. They Will Look Down On You Anyhow. And If You're Trying To Show Off For People At The Bottom, Forget It. They Will Only Envy You. Status Will Get You Nowhere. Only An Open Heart Will Allow You To Float Equally Between Everyone.

Tuesdays With Morrie

Love Each Other Or Die.

Love Each Other

There Are Many Things In My Life That I Wish I Could Take Back. Many Moments I Would Recast.

When We Are Most Alone Is When We Embrace Another's Loneliness.

Don't Let Our Outside Labels Or How Fervent We Look Or Zealous We Are Or How Righteous We Seem; That's Not How You Measure Yourself Against Other People. Everyone Is A Child Of God; If We Really Believed That, We'd Treat Each Other Better.

But You Grab A Moment, Or You Let It Pass.

Once Heaven Is Done With Grandma, We'd Like Her Back, Thanks.

Money Is Not A Substitute For Tenderness, And Power Is Not A Substitute For Tenderness. I Can Tell You, As I'm Sitting Here Dying, When You Most Need It, Neither Money Nor Power Will Give You The Feeling You're Looking For, No Matter How Much Of Them You Have."

If We Knew What Comes Next, We Never Would Have Worried.

It Is Far More Comforting To Think God Listened And Said No, Than To Think That Nobody’s Out There.

Accept The Past As Past, Without Denying It Or Discarding It.

Forgive Yourself

I Thought About The Days I Had Handed Over To A Bottle..the Nights I Can't Remember..the Mornings I Slept Thru..all The Time Spent Running From Myself.

Love Is How You Stay Alive, Even After You Are Gone.

You Can Feel The Whole World And Still Feel Lost In It. So Many People Are In Pain-- No Matter How Smart Or Accomplished--they Cry, They Yearn, They Hurt. But Instead Of Looking Down On Things, They Look Up, Which Is Where I Should Have Been Looking, Too. Because When The World Quiets To The Sound Of Your Own Breathing, We All Want The Same Things: Comfort, Love And A Peaceful Heart.

Before You Measure The Years, You Measure The Days.

I Don't Know What It Is About Food Your Mother Makes For You, Especially When It's Something That Anyone Can Make - Pancakes, Meat Loaf, Tuna Salad - But It Carries A Certain Taste Of Memory.

What You Have Done To This Point Cannot Be Undone. What You Do Next... It Is Still Unwritten.

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 Know What Really Offers You Satisfaction? Offering Others What You Have To Give.

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.

When You Look Into Your Mother’s Eyes, You Know That Is The Purest Love You Can Find On This Earth.

Everyone Keeps Talking About Fixing And Returning America - Making America Great. But Yet, Nobody Ever Seems To Focus On The Fact That You're Not Going To Make Any Country Great If You Don't Address Its Children.

I Don't Use Any Fance Quill Pens Or Pads, Because I Can't Read My Own Handwriting. I Just Use Whatever Computer Is Laying Around, And Start Writing.

Heaven Is Always And Forever Around Us And No Soul Remembered Is Ever Really Gone.

You're Not Going To Fix Things By Helping 65-year-olds Or 75-year-olds For Any Long Run.

Please, Please, Please, Please, Please...,", Squeezing His Eyes Shut Because It Somehow Made The Words More Pure.

There Is No Such Thing As 'too Late' In Life.

Scenery Without Solace Is Meaningless.

War Could Bond Men Like A Magnet, But Like A Magnet It Could Repel Them, Too. The Things They Saw, The Things They Did. Sometimes They Just Wanted To Forget.

Please Do Not Leave Me, He Thought. He Could Not Bear A World Without Alli. He Realized How Much He Relied On Her From Morning Until Night. She Was His Only Conversation. His Only Smile. She Prepared Their Meager Food And Always Offered It To Him First, Even Though He Insisted She Eat Before He Did. They Leaned On Each Other At Sunsets. Holding Her As They Slept Felt Like His Last Connection To Humanity.

The Basis Of Everything, Of All Knowledge, Is The Ability To Read.

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.

Without Love We All Like Birds With Broken Wings.

I Often Find That I Rock Back And Forth With A Beat In My Head Constantly. If I Stop Rocking, It Usually Means I've Hit A Snag In My Writing.

There Is Everything You Know And There Is Everything That Happens. When The Two Do Not Line Up, You Make A Choice.

...the Human Spirit Knows, Deep Down That All Lives Intersect.

So Many Times I Feel I'm Using The Same Words Over And Over, Like A Woman Wearing The Same Dress Every Day. So Boring!

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.

I Worked Because I Could Control It.

Consider The Word “time.” We Use So Many Phrases With It. Pass Time. Waste Time. Kill Time. Lose Time. In Good Time. About Time. Take Your Time. Save Time. A Long Time. Right On Time. Out Of Time. Mind The Time. Be On Time. Spare Time. Keep Time. Stall For Time. There Are As Many Expressions With “time” As There Are Minutes In A Day. But Once, There Was No Word For It At All. Because No One Was Counting. Then Dor Began. And Everything Changed.

We’re So Wrapped Up With Egotistical Things, Career, Family, Having Enough Money, Meeting The Mortgage, Getting A New Car, Fixing The Radiator When It Breaks—we’re Involved In Trillions Of Little Acts Just To Keep Going. So We Don’t Get Into The Habit Of Standing Back And Looking At Our Lives And Saying, Is This All? Is This All I Want? Is Something Missing?

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.

Don't Cling To Things Because Everything Is Impermanent.

Turn On The Faucet. Wash Yourself With The Emotion. It Won’t Hurt You. It Will Only Help. If You Let The Fear Inside, If You Pull It On Like A Familiar Shirt, Then You Can Say To Yourself, “all Right, It’s Just Fear, I Don’t Have To Let It Control Me. I See It For What It Is".

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.

Adam Hid In The Garden Of Eden. Moses Tried To Substitute His Brother. Jonah Jumped A Boat And Was Swallowed By A Whale...man Likes To Run From God. It's A Tradition.

Much Of What We Called "depression" Was Really Dissatisfaction, A Result Of Setting A Bar Impossibly High Or Expecting Treasures We Weren't Willing To Work For.

It’s Not Just Other People We Need To Forgive. We Also 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. I Always Wished I Had Done More With My Work; I Wished I Had Written More Books. I Used To Beat Myself Up Over It. Now I See That Never Did Any Good. Make Peace. You Need To Make Peace With Yourself And Everyone Around You.

She Was Like A Wound Beneath An Old Bandage, And He Had Grown More Used To The Bandage.

The Running Boy Is Inside Every Man, No Matter How Old He Gets.

Anger Is A Poison. It Eats Us Inside. We Think When We Hate Someone We Hurt Them, But Hatred Is A Curved Blade, And The Harm We Do To Others We Also Do To Ourselves.

Sometimes, When You Are Not Getting The Love You Want, Giving Makes You Think You Will.

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 They Are My Children,too.

You Count The Hours You Could Have Spent With Your Mother. It's A Lifetime In Itself.

And In That Line Now Was A Whiskered Old Man, With A Linen Cap And A Crooked Nose, Who Waited In A Place Called The Stardust Band Shell To Share His Part Of The Secret Of Heaven: That Each Affects The Other And The Other Affects The Next, And The World Is Full Of Stories, But The Stories Are All One.

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.

A Man Who Can Take Anything Will Find Most Things Unsatisfying. And A Man Without Memories Is Just A Shell.

Sometimes When You Sacrifice Something Precious, You're Not Really Losing It. You're Just Passing It On To Someone Else.

All I Was Afraid Of Is Saying Good-bye.

Saying Good Bye

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Michelle Malkin

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