"If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you're too busy… - Mitch Albom

"Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent... But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you.
On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it...You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief... But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely.You know what pain is. You know what love is. "All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.

Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.

If you hold back on the emotions — if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them — you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid.

You know what the Buddhists say?
Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent.

You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

If you hold back on the emotions — if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them — you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

Small towns are like metronomes; with the slightest flick, the beat changes.

In stories about life after death, the soul often floats above the good-bye moment, hovering over police cars at highway accidents, or clinging like a spider to hospital-room ceilings. These are people who receive a second chance, who somehow, for some reason, resume their place in the world.

I took my orders, too. But if i couldn't keep you alive, I thought I could at least keep you together. In the middle of a big war, you go looking for a small idea to believe in. When you find one, you hold it the way a soldier holds his crucifix when he's praying in a foxhole.