Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge. His thoughts still haunted him. - Mitch Albom

Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge.

But now I gotta pay,' he said.
To pay?'
For my sin. That's why I'm here, right? Justice?'
The Blue Man smiled. 'No, Edward. You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you...That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more seperate a breeze from the wind.'
...'It was my stupidity, running out there like that. Why should you have to die on account of me? It ain't fair.'
The Blue Man held out his hand. 'Fairness,' he said, 'does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young...Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should?
It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.'
... 'I still don't understand,' Eddie whispered. 'What good came from your death?'
You lived,' the Blue Man answered.
But we barely knew each other. I might as well have been a stranger.'
The Blue Man put his arms on Eddie's shoulders. Eddie felt that warm, melting sensation.
Strangers,' the Blue Man said, 'are just family have yet to come to know.

Love. . . . You are born in it . . . you return to it.

"It's the same thing with faith, by the way." We don't want to get stuck having to go to services all the time, or having to follow all the rules. We don't want to commit to God. We'll take Him when we need Him, or when things are going good. But real commitment? That requires staying power‎-‎-‎-in faith and in marriage."
And if you don't commit? I asked.
"Your choice. But you miss what's on the other side."
What's on the other side?
"Ah." He smiled, "A happiness you cannot find alone.