Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
81 quotes
"Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone."
"This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have."
"There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? Morrie Schwartz"
"But I do know we’re deficient in some way. 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."
"There is no experience like having children.’ That’s all. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children."
"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’."
"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."
"This is part of what a family is about, not just love, but letting others know there’s someone who is watching out for them. It’s what I missed so much when my mother died—what I call your ‘spiritual security’—knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame."
"Do you prefer Mitch? Or is Mitchell better?'.. .. Mitch, I say. Mitch is what my friends called me. 'Well, Mitch it is then,' Morrie says, as if closing a deal. 'And, Mitch?' Yes? 'I hope one day you will think of me as your friend."
"Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me."
"Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another."
"Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?"-Morrie"
"Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too---even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling."
"Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others."
"After the funeral, my life changed. I felt as if time were suddenly precious, water going down an open drain, and I could not move quickly enough. No more playing music at half-empty night clubs. No more writing songs in my apartment, songs that no one would hear."
"Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?.. He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying."
"Rock and roll, big band, the blues. He loved them all. He would close his eyes and with a blissful smile begin to move to his own sense of rhythm. It wasn't always pretty."
"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"."
"I snicker, but the idea is momentarily appealing. Part of me is scared of leaving school. Part of me wants to go desperately. Tension of opposites."
".. 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 humour, with composure."
"That was the end of his driving.. That was the end of his walking free.. That was the end of his privacy.. And that was the end of his secret."
"The years after graduation hardened me into someone quite different from the strutting graduate.. headed for New York City, ready to offer the world his talent. The world, I discovered, was not all that interested. I wandered around my early twenties, paying rent and reading classifieds and wondering why the lights were not turning green for me."
"ALS is like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and leaves your body a pile of wax.. you cannot support yourself standing.. you cannot sit up straight. By the end, if you are still alive.. your soul, perfectly awake, is imprisoned inside a limp husk.. like something from a science fiction movie, the man frozen inside his own flesh."
"I earned a mater's degree in journalism and took the first job offered, as a sports writer. Instead of chasing my own fame, I wrote about famous athletes chasing theirs."
"I was cranked to a fifth gear, and everything I did, I did on a deadline."