Books I Like: The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

My favorites quotes from this book..


But all endings are also beginnings.

No story sits by itself. Our lives connect like threads on a loom, interwoven in ways we never realize.

The tale of your life is written second by second, as shifting as the flip of a pencil to an eraser.

In the middle of a big crisis, a small belief can be your salvation.

Remember this, Annie. When we build, we build on the shoulders of those who came before us. And when we fall apart, those who came before us help put us back together.

We often think things are about us when they are not.

Have you ever considered how many living things there are on earth?” Cleo asked. “People. Animals. Birds. Fish. Trees. It makes you wonder how anyone could feel lonely. Yet humans do. It’s a shame.

That the end of loneliness is when someone needs you.” The old woman smiled. “And the world is so full of need.

No act done for someone else is ever wasted.

Children begin by needing their parents. Over time, they reject them. Eventually, they become them.

This is the disarming power of children: their need makes you forget your own.

But the world does not cater to our timing.

You always wonder about your funeral. How big? Who’ll show up? In the end it’s meaningless. You realize, once you die, that a funeral is for everyone else, not you.

Just because you see things straight doesn’t mean you see them in time.

We are blinded by our regrets, Annie. We don’t realize who else we punish while we’re punishing ourselves.

She had come to believe that living with a man was more about tolerance than romance, and marriage was just another letdown along the way.

Secrets. We think by keeping them, we’re controlling things, but all the while, they’re controlling us.

What’s time between a mother and her daughter? Never too much, never enough.

When you’re ready to remember, you’ll remember.

When people suffer a near-death experience, they often say, “My whole life flashed before my eyes.” Scientists have even studied this phenomenon, aware that certain brain cortices can suffer hypoxia and blood loss, which, during a great trauma, might trigger a release of memories.

But science only knows what it knows. And because it lacks an understanding of the next world, it cannot explain that the flash before your eyes is actually a peek behind the curtain of heaven, where your life and the lives of all you’ve touched are on the same plane, so that seeing one memory is the same as seeing them all.

That’s how salvation works. The wrongs we do open doors to do right.

You only have peace when you make it with yourself.

Love comes when you least expect it. Love comes when you most need it. Love comes when you are ready to receive it or can no longer deny it. These are common expressions that hold varying truths of love.

And while she didn’t know it then, she was learning another truth about love: it comes when it comes. Simple as that.

There was no one she wanted to see more. There was no one she wanted to see less.

Loss is as old as life itself. But for all our evolution, we are yet to accept it.

You lose something every day you live, Annie. Sometimes it’s as tiny as the breath you just expelled, sometimes it’s so big you think you won’t survive it.