Finding Chika: A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family

by Mitch Albom

takes a special strength to take care of a child, Chika, and a whole different strength to admit you cannot.

There are many kinds of selfishness in this world, but the most selfish is hoarding time, because none of us know how much we have, and it is an affront to God to assume there will be more.

“Dying is only one thing to be sad about, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else”—that

The most precious thing you can give someone is your time, Chika, because you can never get it back. When you don’t think about getting it back, you’ve given it in love.

One of the best things a child can do for an adult is to draw them down, closer to the ground, for clearer reception to the voices of the earth.

[Misfortune doesn’t have a horn.] —Haitian proverb

Because to doctors, no matter how empathetic, you were one of many, and to us you were one of one.