Quotes About Relationships

CONTROL KILLS CONNECTION HEALS

People have sex with strangers. People marry strangers. People spend half a century in bed together and wind up strangers at the end. Nicholas knows all this; he has cleaned house after his dead parents and grandparents, made all the terrible discoveries that only death affords. How long does it take to know anyone? Five minutes, and done. Nothing can move you off a first impression. That person in your life's passenger seat? Always a hitchhiker to be dropped off just down the road. p199

It seemed to me that half of life's problems would be solved if one of us had a vagina.

We are made for art . . . The moment Maddy took up the tendril phrase, Els knew she was as dear to him as his own life. Talons gripped his ribs, and he felt a joy bordering on panic. He needed to know how this woman would unfold. He needed to write music that would settle into her range like frost on fields. They'd spend their years together, grow old, get sick, die in shared bewilderment.

That's the ruling story on this planet. We live suspended between love and ego.

Life is nothing but mutual infection.

There are consolations that the strongest human love is powerless to give. (page 330)

But people aren't alone, and they never have been.

I never knew how strong a drug other people are.

How long does it take to know anyone? Five minutes, and done. Nothing can move you off a first impression. That person in your life's passenger seat? Always a hitchhiker, to be dropped off just down the road.

He has always been alien to her, a man of procedures where there should be passions. Now she wonders if he might have died, once, too.

That's the ruling story on this planet. We live suspended between love and ego. Maybe it's different in other galaxies. But I doubt it.

I never knew how strong a drug other people are." "The strongest. Or at least the most widely abused." "How long does it take to . . . detox?" He considers. "Nobody's ever clean.

I never knew how strong a drug other people are. The strongest. Or at least the most widely abused. How long does it take to . . . detox? He considers. Nobody's ever clean.

You're studying what makes some people take the living world seriously when the only real thing for everyone else is other people.

You're self-reliant. Like your trees." "But that's just it, Dennis. They aren't self-reliant. Everything out here is cutting deals with everything else." "That's what I think, too." She laughs at the purity of his hunch.

Love, as all the good novels know, is a question of title, deed, and possession.

There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one

Un figlio scopre sempre le debolezze dei propri genitori. Le percepisce prima ancora delle parole, come una prima e ultima lezione. La debolezza può essere l'unica lezione dei genitori destinata a durare nel tempo. (p. 247)

The things she catches Doug-firs doing, over the course of these years, fill her with joy. When the lateral roots of two Douglas-firs run into each other

When she speaks again, the softness shatters him. "I never knew how strong a drug other people are." "The strongest. Or at least the most widely abused." "How long does it take to . . . detox?" He considers. "Nobody's ever clean.

There are consolations that the strongest human love is powerless to give.

Kindness may look for something in return, but that doesn't make it any less kind." Perhaps

The phone rings, but she doesn't pick up. It's one of three men whose beliefs about her logistics she can no longer keep straight.