Mitch Albom Quotes

Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?

Everyone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did we would do things differently. Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, "Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?

It might seem a psychotic, insane thing, quitting a job after I'd built a great career over eight years, but it was a wake-up call. All too often we ignore those, forget that we don't know how long we're here for and that we need to make the most of every moment.

This is your life and the clock is ticking.

If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive? My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable. Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.

I think everybody at some point - especially if they've been working their whole lives - should take time out and think about what they've done.

An awareness of one's mortality can lead you to wake up and live an authentic, meaningful life.

If you've done what you need to do, you need to go bury yourself, because what else are you going to do? I think that that's where life stops.

Ya know, right now the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all I thank God I'm alive today, and I mean that. I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing.

If you want to live a memorable life, you have to be the kind of person who remembers to remember.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Your body must become familiar with its death - in all its possible forms and degrees - as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.

You have to look yourself in the eye and ask, 'Who are you?' It can't be all about work.

The difference between kitties and humans is that we are aware of our mortal condition, and the burden of consciousness is to evoke and embody and explore the coordinates of our condition.

Death is promised. So what do you do with your life? How do you make the most of it? How do you make your voice the loudest?

If this was the last day of your life, would you spend it the way you're spending today?

Remember how often you have postponed minding your interest, and let slip those opportunities the gods have given you. It is now high time to consider what sort of world you are part of, and from what kind of governor of it you are descended; that you have a set period assigned you to act in, and unless you improve it to brighten and compose your thoughts, it will quickly run off with you, and be lost beyond recovery.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.

It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?'...If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time-the stuff of life

I was going through the motions of life, instead of really living, and there's no excuse for that. It's not something I'll let happen to me again.

Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime

It is only when we become aware that our time is limited that we can channel our energy into truly living

We must each lead a way of life with self-awareness and compassion, to do as much as we can. Then, whatever happens we will have no regrets.

Am I the woman I think I am, the woman I want to be? More importantly, am I the woman the Savior needs me to be?

The quality of my life was the quality of my questions.