Quotes About Boundaries

I don't know why someone else's marriage has anything to do with me.

You have to have enough respect for other human beings to leave their lives alone. If you admire that life, build it for yourself. Don't just try to come in and take somebody else's life.

Friendship can only survive on a sound basis of ignorance.

But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilling yearnings.

The Abbé was no believer in too much intimacy. Human beings, precariously making their souls, could not press in too closely upon each other without damage, he thought. The instinct for fusion was one of those immortal longings whose complete satisfaction was not for this life.

He would let himself in whenever he felt like it, come and go as he pleased. I remembered when this was such a big deal for me, not so long ago. I'd wanted my own space, my front door that I could lock behind me and know for sure that nobody was going to be inside there without me. I remembered telling him that I wanted that space back. I remembered asking him for the key, and him walking away from me. I remembered him simply walking away and leaving, without so much as an argument.

I don't want someone to watch sports in bed. That drives me nuts.

There are some things you shouldn't have to discuss with your parents, lesbian conception is one of them.

Aber weißt du,' fuhr sie fort, 'keine von uns steckt in ihrer Haut. So sehr uns das Wohl anderer Menschen am Herzen liegt, wir können nicht ihr Leben leben. Jeder kann nur das tun, was ihm möglich ist. Es mag mehr sein, als das, was wir, also du oder ich, tun könnten, oder auch weniger, aber meistens ist es etwas anderes.

Ellen chopped the wood at the woodpile in the yard and she carried water from an old well in the rear of the pasture. She was afraid to pass beyond the ways allotted to her by her labours, and so the region beyond the pond stood off as a picture, unexplored

My mother would hate me saying any of this. My father, too. It didn't matter how unprivate you were: If what you had to say about your life impinged on the privacy of others, then you shouldn't say it. My mother loved stories, though, particularly stories about herself, and she is, I think, the hero of this book, which she would like.

She had an internal clock set to her mother's hunger for news, but sometimes it felt good to ignore it.

Italy is another Pack's territory. You're a guest; make sure that you are a polite one." God, I hope he told Heather that.

He looked at the books, and she wanted to say, 'Stop that,' as though he were reading her diary.

Why do you need everyone married?" Christopher has said to him angrily, when Henry has asked about his son's life. "Why can't you just leave people alone?" He doesn't want people alone.

Stop smelling me," she said to him.

Don't tell your friends about your indigestions: "How are you!" is a greeting, not a question.

The real problem of leisure time is how to keep others from using yours.

Human kinship systems vary enormously but not limitlessly. There are always rules prohibiting sex (and hence marriage) with certain kinds of kin.

Every man takes the limits of his field of vision for the limits of the world.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

No le tolero eso. —Pues revise usted, si es tan amable, sus límites de tolerancia.

sabía por experiencia que no convenía llevar a nadie a sus límites.