".. when all this started, I asked myself, 'Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?' I decided I'm going to live - or at least try to live - the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humour, with composure."

"Ends are for yesterday, not tomorrows."

"Nurses came to his house to work with Morrie's withering legs.. bending them back and forth as if pumping water from a well.. He met with meditation teachers, and closed his eyes and narrowed his thoughts until his world shrunk down to a single breath, in and out, in and out."

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

"Life is a series of pulls back and forth... A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. Most of us live somewhere in the middle. A wrestling match...Which side win? Love wins. Love always wins."

"But she wasn't around, and that's the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone."

"What was the constant? Movement. Yes. With time there was always movement. The setting sun. The dripping water. Thependulums. The spilling sand. To realize his destiny, such movement had to cease. He had to stop the flowof time completely."

"In college, I had a course in Latin, and one day the word "divorce" came up. I always figured it came from some root that meant "divide." In truth, it comes from "divertere," which means "to divert."I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else."

"We're so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks-we're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?"

"Then, after showing the pill and some graphics, those same people appeared again, looking happier.The Reb and I watched in silence. After it ended, he asked, "Do you think those pills work?"Not like that, I said."No," he agreed. "Not like that."

"I had told him I was searching for my keys, that's what had taken me so long in the car, and I squeezed him tighter, as if I could crush my little lie."

"A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip."

"The backside of mountain is a fight against human nature," he said. "You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up."

"With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can't appreciate what we have."

"Accept who you are, and revel in it."

"People often belittle the place where they were born but heaven can be found in the most unlikely places."

"Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back."

"It's funny. I met a man once who did a lot of mountain climbing. I asked him which was harder, ascending or descending? He said without a doubt descending, because ascending you were so focused on reaching the top, you avoided mistakes.The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature, he said. "You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up."

"But it's hard to explain, Mitch. Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims... and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But--how can I put this?--I'm almost... drawn to them."

"No life is a waste," the Blue Man said. "The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we're alone."

"Man alone measures time.Man alone chimes the hour.And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures.A fear of time running out."

"Take any emotion-love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions-if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them-you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. "But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment'."

"There is a reason you glance up when you first hear a melody, or tap your foot to the sound of a drum. All humans are musical. Why else would the Lord give you a beating heart?"

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

"It's not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done."

"I snicker, but the idea is momentarily appealing. Part of me is scared of leaving school. Part of me wants to go desperately. Tension of opposites."

"Silence enhances music. What you do not play can sweeten what you do. But it is not the same with words. What you do not say can haunt you."

"But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins."

"When you are measuring life, you are not living it."

"When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched, right? Like this?" He made a fist. "Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say, 'The whole world is mine.' "But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned his lesson." What lesson? I asked. He stretched open his empty fingers. "We can take nothing with us."

"The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone."

"Every life has one true love snapshot."

"Going back to something is harder than you think."

"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 vulnerable, pneumonia took hold of him, and in time, he died.'Because of Mickey?' Eddie said.Because of loyalty,' she said.People don't die because of loyalty.'They don't?' she smiled. 'Religion? government? Are we not loyal to such things, sometimes to the death?'Eddie shrugged.Better,' she said, 'To be loyal to one another."

"You can feel the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-- no matter how smart or accomplished--they cry, they yearn, they hurt. But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: comfort, love and a peaceful heart."

"..And because he was still able to move his hands - Morrie always spoke with both hands waving - he showed great passion when explaining how you face the end of life."

"You live on - in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here...Death ends life, not a relationship."

"The secret is not to make your music louder. But to make the world quieter."

"The problem is that we don't believe that we are much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholic and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own."

"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

"Because, from the beginning, God said, 'I'm gonna put this world into your hands. If I run everything, then that's not you.' So we were created with a piece of divinity inside us, but with this thing called free will, and I think God watches us everyday, lovingly, praying we will make the right choices."

"The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves."

"If you accept that you can die at any time - then you might not be as ambitious as you are."

"For all that was happening to him, his voice was strong and inviting, and his mind was vibrating with a million thoughts. He was intent on proving that the word 'dying' was not synonymous with 'useless'."

"Have you found someone to share your heart with? Are you giving to your community? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you trying to be as human as you can be?"

"Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives."

"There is no experience like having children.' That's all. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children."

"The bride waits here," she said, running her hands along her hair, taking in her image but seeming to drift away. "This is the moment you think about what you're doing. Who you're choosing. Who you will love. If it's right, Eddie, this can be such a wonderful moment."

"Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted."

"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 find one, you hold it the way a soldier holds his crucifix when he's praying in a foxhole."