Quotes About Connection

He said you used him as a narrator, an interpreter of stories. I liked that term. I wondered if that was how you interacted with those around you. You wanted people's stories, not them. You cared for the tale, not the teller.

In the grand scheme of stories, he was nothing, almost an unmentionable, for he was not an odd character or an interesting one. He was a thread, one of many, without which the tapestry would crumble, the yarn fray, and the tale unravel.

Anna Karenina was the first time I allowed a book and its world into my house.

She was socially inept, an affliction I am quite intimate with.

The presence of another person—of any person whatsoever—makes me feel awkward,

I can relate to Marguerite Duras even though I'm not French, nor have I been consumed by love for an East Asian man. I can life inside Alice Munro's skin. But I can't relate to my own mother. My body is full of sentences and moments, my heart resplendent with lovely turns of phrases, but neither is able to be touched by another.

I was living, I thought I was content, I was told I was happy. I did a marvelous impression of a man not crushed by dread. Once I felt your warm breath on my neck, I was no longer invisible, you saw me, you always saw me. Me cogitas, ergo sum.

We were two solitudes benefiting from a grace that was continuously reinvigorated in each other's presence, two solitudes who nourished each other.

I lie on my side, head sunk in the pillow, waiting for first light, for the lift of the curtain, waiting for you, how your right hand used to entwine with my left in a slow dance, how our bodies fit in bed, yet you didn't show up.

Sex, like art, can unsettle a soul, can grind a heart in a mortar. Sex, like literature, can sneak the other within one's walls, even if for only a moment, a moment before one immures oneself again.

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

In the world's audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight

Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.

He who wants to do good knocks at the gate. He who loves finds the door open.

Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.

When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the touch of the one in the play of the many.

We live in the world when we love it.

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

Once we dreamt that we were strangers. We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.

The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.

Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance

Only in love are unity and duality not in conflict.