Twice

by Mitch Albom

“My life’s been saved too many times already.”

When you are lonely and you suddenly find a friend, it fills up your world.

The truth is, you never do as much good as you could.

When we’re young, we want to satisfy every desire. When we’re old, our greatest desire is to not die alone.

was too young to understand the real reason for my gloom—that my first kiss had only come on a second try. Years later, I would wish I had saved that moment for someone else.

A boy may not do everything for his mother. But he’ll do anything for her memory.

Looking back, I suppose I was depressed. I had lost Wesley as I had lost my mother. Both too young. Both too soon. Perhaps dallying with death was a way of feeling closer to where they’d gone. I don’t know. It doesn’t always make sense, the way you miss somebody. Sometimes, hurt seeks hurt.

There are years you think about for moments, and moments you think about for years.

pee.”

Me too

When you come into this world, you have all these people who want to take care of you, and you don’t know any of them. Then, when you’re leaving this world, you have all these people you do know, but few of them want to be bothered.

This was before I understood that all the magic in the world couldn’t delay death.

Instead, I hid my flaws, afraid they would cost me her affection.

That would prove to be a mistake, and my first lesson in The Truth About True Love: what we yearn for, deep down, is a heart that will embrace us after we make a fool of ourselves.

we slid our fingers sideways until they fell in place, then tightened as if snapping two souls together.

“Some of the biggest things in life happen over the smallest turns in the day.”

“Love is different. If you change your mind, if you jump back and start seeing someone else, your first love will never love you again.”

“I want, and you want, and God does what God wants.”

And uneven in love is unhealthy.

When you realize you are about to lose a parent, you suddenly want to know everything, say everything, share every little detail you omitted during the years when you were taking them for granted.

I think a lot about heaven these days. The dying often do.

This was when I still believed that a heart could be distracted from itself.

little girl named Princess who brought me red mabuyu sweets. I was suddenly overcome by a yearning, if not a grief, for my once-innocent childhood,

Sadly, when you lose yourself, you don’t realize who else you’re losing, too.

What is it about love that makes us think we can tame it, when all the while it is taming us?

weight, and went to a gym five mornings a week to do weight work. I know it’s a cliché, Boss, that people take better care of themselves after a relationship ends. And it is strange that you’d rather make yourself attractive for the possibility of a love, than for one you already have. I suppose all of it goes back to the grass is always greener.

We invent all kinds of theories about how our hearts get broken, when we’re the ones who drop them on the floor.

“destiny is patient.”

have lived a lifetime with you just out of reach. I can die that way as well.

What I’ve learned—after all this time—is that love is indeed the only rational act. And the only real lifesaver.

Because The Truth About True Love is that it can wait a lifetime. Or two.

I am so grateful for this life that keeps on teaching.