Quotes About Relationships

The odd truth about Alfred was that love, for him, was a matter not of approaching but of keeping away.

I'm telling you that I will be all right without you. Everything we have is temporary, the joy, the suffering, everything. I had the joy of experiencing your goodness for a very long time. It was enough. I have no right to ask for more.

The lump in his throat was evidence of how much, in spite of everything, he still loved her.

Can you imagine going to bed with Kierkegaard? He'd never stop asking, 'Can I do this to you? Is this okay?

The man who 'forgets' his toothbrush in a woman's house is a man who wants to come back.

Then again, there had always been something not quite right about the Berglunds.

He knows how love blinds people to the truth about the one they are in love with.

For the next two hours Denise mainly paid attention to her hand, which she'd laid on the sofa cushion within easy reach of Robin's. The hand wasn't comfortable there, it wanted to be retracted, but she didn't want to give up hard-won territory. When the movie ended they watched TV, and then they were silent for an impossibly long time, five minutes or a year, and still Robin didn't take the warm, five-fingered bait. Denise would have welcomed some pushy male sexuality right around now.

You need closeness with other people. And how is closeness built? By sharing secrets. Colleen

That everything in the society actually revolves about women, not men. The men are all looking at pictures of women, and the women are all communicating with other women.

Pip wondered what the secret was of being different in a way that attracted people, as opposed to her own way.

I am a firm believer in family life. I feel that the home is the foundation of true happiness...much more the foundation than the church (or temple) or the school can ever be.

She, for her part, was accustomed to my leavings and didn't complain too much. But she still felt about me what she'd always felt, which was what I wouldn't really feel about her until after she was gone. I hate it when Daylight Savings Time starts while you're here, she told me while we were driving to the airport, because it means I have an hour less with you.

To love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

No existe nadie cuya personalidad real nos guste hasta la última partícula. Por eso, un mundo donde todo consiste en gustar es en última instancia una mentira. Pero sí existe la persona de cuya personalidad real uno ama hasta la última partícula. Y por eso el amor representa tal amenaza existencial para el orden del tecnoconsumismo: Saca a la luz la mentira

He blamed her both for liking his mother and for

The idea was that God was to be found in relationships, not in liturgy and ritual, and that the way to worship Him and approach Him was to emulate Christ in his relationships with his disciples, by exercising honesty, confrontation, and unconditional love.

our culture attaches too much importance to feelings, he says it's out of control, it's not computers that are making everything virtual, it's mental health. Everyone's trying to correct their thoughts and improve their feelings and work on their relationships and parenting skills instead of just getting married and raising children like they used to

I'm saying that children are not supposed to get along with their parents. Your parents are not supposed to be your best friends. There's supposed to be some element of rebellion. That's how you define yourself as a person.

She'd barely registered as a person at all. She'd been little more than an inconvenient object at the breakfast table, an annoying vase in the way of his sugar bowl, not even worth telling a decent lie to. Soon enough, when she'd lost her fat, she would have more ways to make him pay. For now, the sweetest punishment would be to say nothing, let him think she knew nothing, let him damn himself by telling further lies.

What we get, instead, are characters keeping their heartless compulsions secret from those who love them; characters scheming to appear loving or to prove to themselves that what feels like love is really just disguised self-interest; or, at most, characters directing an abstract or spiritual love toward somebody profoundly repellent . . .

it would have been better to have forced herself to see more of her parents in the critical years of her own parenthood, so as to better understand her kids' response to her.

Jonathan Franzen

You wouldn't believe how quickly the most interesting person in the world can turn into the most boring person you'll ever meet.