The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom

• Everyone has an idea of heaven, as do most religions, and they should all be respected.


• Scenery without solace is meaningless.


• There are no random acts. We are all connected. You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.


• Fairness does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young.


• Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.


• No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.


• Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to.


• Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.


• 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.


• Sons will adore their fathers through even the worst behavior. It is how they learn devotion. Before he can devote himself to God or a woman, a boy will devote himself to his father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation.


• All parents damange their children. This was their life together. Neglect. Violence. Silence.


• You have peace when you make it with yourself.


• Things that happen before you are born still affect you. And people who come before your time affect you as well.


• Silence is rarely a refuge. His thoughts still haunted him.


• Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from 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.


• Love, like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.


• Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all.


• Life has to end. Love doesn't.


• Silence is worse when you know it won't be broken.


• It is never hard to act ordinary if you feel ordinary.

2/16/2007