“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely...”
Work
Plot Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him, as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here" Personal Details Collection Status In Collection Index 10 Read It Yes Links Amazon US Product Details LoC Classification PS3601.L335F59 2003 Dewey 813/.6
Quotes
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Mitch Albom
Canonical work source
“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely...”
“Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.”
“Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to.”
“There are five people you meet in heaven. Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life...”
“All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.”
“People often belittle the place where they were born but heaven can be found in the most unlikely places.”
“Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its...”
“Every life has one true love snapshot.”
“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...”
“I took my orders, too. But if i couldn't keep you alive, I thought I could at least keep you together. In the middle of a big war, you go looking for a small idea to believe in. When you fin...”
“Holding anger is a poison...It eats you from inside...We think that by hating someone we hurt them...But hatred is a curved blade...and the harm we do to others...we also do to ourselves.”
“In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.”
“Your father was no longer a young man. he was already in his fifties.' Fifty-six,' Eddie said blankly. Fifty-six,' the old woman repeated. 'His body had been weakened, the ocean had left him...”