Mitch Albom · 512 pages
Rating: (22.9K votes)
“All humans are musical. Why else would the Lord give you a beating heart?”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“Everyone joins a band in this life. And what you play always affects someone. Sometimes, it affects the world.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“The secret is not to make your music louder, but to make the world quieter.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“This is life. Things get taken away. You will learn to start over many times -- or you will be useless.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private vocabulary. Maybe you will flop on couches backstage, or share a boardroom table, or crowd around a galley inside a ship. But in each band you join, you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“You cannot write if you do not read,” the blind man said. “You cannot eat if you do not chew. And you cannot play if you do not”—he grabbed for the boy’s hand—“listen.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“But you cannot change your past, no matter how you craft your future.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“In every artist’s life, there comes a person who lifts the
curtain on creativity. It is the closest you come to seeing
me again.
The first time, when you emerge from the womb, I am a
brilliant color in the rainbow of human talents from which
you choose. Later, when a special someone lifts the curtain,
you feel that chosen talent stirring inside you, a bursting
passion to sing, paint, dance, bang on drums. And you are never the same.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“Every loss leaves a hole in your heart.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“You humans are always locking each other away. Cells. Dungeons. Some of your earliest jails were sewers, where men sloshed in their own waste. No other creature has this arrogance—to confine its own. Could you imagine a bird imprisoning another bird? A horse jailing a horse? As a free form of expression, I will never understand it. I can only say that some of my saddest sounds have been heard in such places. A song inside a cage is never a song. It is a plea.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“Sometimes I think the greatest talent of all is perseverance.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“You cannot ask things to do what they are not meant to do. Eventually, they will break.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“Truth is light. Lies are shadows. Music is both.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“There are moments on earth when the Lord smiles at the unexpected sweetness of His creation.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“You cannot unplay your notes. Time, like music, is indelible that way.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“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?”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“EVERYONE JOINS A BAND IN THIS LIFE. You are born into your first one. Your mother plays the lead. She shares the stage with your father and siblings. Or perhaps your father is absent, an empty stool under a spotlight. But he is still a founding member, and if he surfaces one day, you will have to make room for him. As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private vocabulary. Maybe you will flop on couches backstage, or share a boardroom table, or crowd around a galley inside a ship. But in each band you join, you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it. And, as is usually the fate with bands, most of them will break up—through distance, differences, divorce, or death.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“You’re never in love with anyone the way you are when you’re eighteen,”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“At a certain point, your life is more about your legacy to your kids than anything else.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“What would you give to remember everything? I have this power. I absorb your memories; when you hear me, you relive them. A first dance. A wedding. The song that played when you got the big news. No other talent gives your”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“Music is in the connection of human souls, speaking a language that needs no words. Everyone joins a band in this life. And what you play always affects someone. Sometimes, it affects the world. Frankie’s”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“I have said that music allows for quick creation. But it is nothing compared with what you humans can destroy in a single conversation.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“Inside all humans is the entirety of your memories, the ones you can access and the ones you cannot.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“Talent is a piece of God's shadow. And under that shadow, human stories intersect.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“A teacher’s shadow can hover for life.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“Remember this, Francisco,” he said. “The secret is not to make your music louder, but to make the world quieter.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“Man searches for courage in drink, but it is not courage that he finds, it is fear that he loses. A drunken man may step off a cliff. That does not make him brave, just forgetful.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“Do not cry for losing blood. Not for something you love.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
“I [Music] was born in the open air, in the breaks of waves and the whistling of sandstorms, the hoots of owls and the cackles of tui birds. I travel in echoes. I ride the breeze. I was forged in nature, rugged and raw. Only man shapes my edges to make me beautiful. [Chapter 2]”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
Mitch Albom
Born place: in Passaic, New Jersey, The United States
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“We Anishinaabeg are the keepers of the names of the earth. And unless the earth is called by the names it gave us humans, won’t it cease to love us? And isn’t it true that if the earth stops loving us, everyone, not just the Anishinaabeg, will cease to exist? That is why we all must speak our language, nindinawemagonidok, and call everything we see by the name of its spirit. Even the chimookomanag, who are trying to destroy us, are depending upon us to remember. Mi’sago’i.”
― Louise Erdrich, quote from The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
“No one can really claim to know politics properly until he has stayed up all night writing a speech for delivery the following day. While the world sleeps, the orator paces by lamplight, wondering what madness ever brought him to this occupation in the first place. Arguments are prepared and discarded. The exhausted mind ceases to have any coherent grip upon the purpose of the enterprise, so that often--usually an hour or two after midnight--there comes a point where failing to turn up, feigning illness, and hiding at home seem the only realistic options. And then, somehow, just asa panic and humiliation beckon, the parts cohere, and there it is: a speech. A second-rate orator now retires gratefully to bed. A Cicero stays up and commits it to memory.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome
“Poor Cindy's heart was torn to shreds.
My Prince! She thought. He chops off heads!
How could I marry anyone
Who does that sort of thing for fun?
The Prince cried, "Who's this dirty slut?
Off with her nut! Off with her nut!”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Revolting Rhymes
“Kroldor’s men are going to blame him for the way things turned out,’ Hettar observed. ‘I know. But then, that’s one of the hazards of leadership.”
― David Eddings, quote from Magician's Gambit
“He knew too what it was to live through a hurricane with the other people of the island and the bond that the hurricane made between all people who had been through it. He also knew that hurricanes could be so bad that nothing could live through them.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Islands in the Stream
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