Quotes About Attachment

Women are like dogs really. They love like dogs, a little insistently. And they like to fetch and carry and come back wistfully after hard words, and learn rather easily to carry a basket.

The world's full of people grieving for somebody they cared about. It's sheer sentimentality to worry about the ones we don't.

Hands are unbearably beautiful. They hold on to things. They let things go.

It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.

Indifference is not caring. Detachment is caring deeply enough to separate.

When I am dead and opened, you shall find "Calais" lying in my heart.

I feel about my dogs now, and all the dogs I had prior to this, the way I feel about children—they are that important to me. When I have lost a dog I have gone into a mourning period that lasted for months.

I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot which I do not wish to untie.

In short I will part with anything for you but you.

I was perpetually grief-stricken when I finished a book, and would slide down from my sitting position on the bed, put my cheek on the pillow and sigh for a long time. It seemed there would never be another book. It was all over, the book was dead. It lay in its bent cover by my hand. What was the use? Why bother dragging the weight of my small body down to dinner? Why move? Why breathe? The book had left me, and there was no reason to go on.

So many people came into your life, and they were such a part of the everyday that it was impossible to imagine them gone until, one day, they were.

Now was not the time to be sentimental. As a child, she'd been ridiculously sentimental about loss, about time passing.

That which can be purchases at a shop is easily left in a taxi; that which you carry inside you is difficult, though not impossible, to misplace" -Agatha Swanburne

They are trying to take you back from me now, and they will—but only for a brief, little while—

You are truly mature if you can listen lightly, as if to an echo, to criticism or to vile blasphemy, no matter how unbearable, without reacting. As long as you are not attached to fame, glory, reputation, or social status, there is no need to suffer. A person without attachments has neither lifelong enemies to overthrow nor any need to flatter people in power.

De quoi ai-je peur? De toi, enfin de moi sans toi.

Coming home at last At the end of the year I wept to find My old umbilical cord.

Ah, Officer Orcot…what am I going to do about you? I do enjoy your company. One of these days, I may not let you leave.

No one can be a replacement for another person. That is why, farewells are always difficult.

You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much.

I have been in love only once in my life. I suppose that makes me a romantic, in a sense. The idea that you have one true love, that no one else will compare after they have gone. It's a sweet idea, but the reality is terror itself. To be faced with all those lonely years after. To exist when the point of you has gone.

I unclip the lead from Abraham's collar and he stays by my side and looks up at me, confused, as if perplexed by the concept of freedom. I relate.

Good. You are, of course, allowed to love food and music and champagne and rare sunny afternoons in October. You can love the sight of waterfalls and the smell of old books, but the love of people is off limits. Do you hear me? Don't attach yourself to people, and try to feel as little as you possibly can for those you do meet. Because otherwise you will slowly lose your mind . . .

Love was trapping me here.