Smitha

“And then he wakes up. Sweating. Panting. Always the same. The worst part is not the sleeplessness. The worst part is the general darkness the dream leaves over him, a gray film that clouds the day. Even his happy moments feel encased, like holes jabbed in a hard sheet of ice.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“It expresses a craving that so many of us will recognise. Have we really got so far into the realm of electric light and central heating that the rhythm of the year is irrelevant to us, and we no longer even want to notice the point at which the nights start getting shorter again?”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“You didn’t get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“Still, Eddie envied the way his brother looked in the evenings, so tanned and clean. Eddie’s fingernails, like his father’s, were stained with grease, and at the dinner table Eddie would flick them with his thumbnail, trying to get the dirt out. He caught his father watching him once and the old man grinned. “Shows you did a hard day’s work,” he said, and he held up his own dirty fingernails, before wrapping them around a glass of beer. By this point—already a strapping teenager—Eddie only nodded back. Unbeknownst to him, he had begun the ritual of semaphore with his father, forsaking words or physical affection. It was all to be done internally. You were just supposed to know it, that’s all. Denial of affection. The damage done.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven