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The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

Mitch Albom

Top 10 Best Quotes

“All humans are musical. Why else would the Lord give you a beating heart?”

“Everyone joins a band in this life. And what you play always affects someone. Sometimes, it affects the world.”

“The secret is not to make your music louder, but to make the world quieter.”

“This is life. Things get taken away. You will learn to start over many times -- or you will be useless.”

“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.”

“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.”

“But you cannot change your past, no matter how you craft your future.”

“Sometimes I think the greatest talent of all is perseverance.”

“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.”

“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.”

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Book Keywords:

starting-over

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