Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

"when he smiles it's as if you'd just told him the first joke on earth."

"Without love we all like birds with broken wings."

"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?"

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

"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. 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 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."

"Life is a series of pulls back and forth... A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. Most of us live somewhere in the middle. A wrestling match...Which side win? Love wins. Love always wins"

"Be compassionate ... and take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be a better place."

"We all have same beginning (BIRTH), and we will have same ending (DEATH). So how different can we be?"

"It’s not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we made."

"Love wins, love always wins."

"Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else."

"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."

"Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others."

"Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else."

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."

"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?"

"Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward."

"It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at 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 also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."