Quotes About Connection

Humans need community, for our emotional health. We need connection, a sense of belonging. We are not built to thrive in isolation

I miss you, Daddy. I wish you could have seen me as a mother. It would have made you smile.

Julia by her side; it made sense that with her sister she would also briefly be allowed her normal taste buds.

When I'm with you, I feel fixed.

He knows the loss of Jordan will remain with him forever, even as Edward slowly leaves his parents behind. He was supposed to grow up and leave his mom and dad, after all, just like he will leave John and Lacey in the fall when he goes to college. That is part of the natural order. Edward wasn't supposed to leave Jordan, though. They were meant to age together. That loss continues to be spiked with pain; it will never be soothed.

always be one of her great joys that her father had said this to her and that she was able to delight him by paraphrasing one of his favorite poems: "We are not contained between our hats and boots." And then Mrs. DiPietro had come outside with their bags, and the father and daughter had walked home, their arms touching, molecules dancing between them, and the stars turning on like tiny lightbulbs in the evening sky.

We contain the other, hopelessly and forever." —James Baldwin

She fits her hand over his and presses. Her skin is soft, and the pressure makes his mouth form a smile. He can be furious with her and still be aware that he loves her at the same time. It took years for him to be able to accept the absence of logic in their love. Frustration plus a bad mood plus a particular smile of hers equaled a shot of joy in his belly.

He wonders if the scientists who tend to the Large Hadron Collider are hoping to discover not only what happens in the air between two people but how that pressurized air changes those people inside their skin. He hears the science teacher say, The air between us is not empty space.

The physical jolt shifts something inside Jordan, and a new truth yawns open: I do need them. I need all three of them. And while the plane hesitates, as if deciding its next move, his apartment now has a bunk bed to share with his brother and another bedroom, for his parents.

Edward swallows. Like a dutiful student, he follows her train of thought. Voldemort equals plane crash. Dead parents equal dead parents. Harry equals him.

He closes his eyes for a second, and Edward sees the lines of pain on Gary's face; they're the same lines—carved by loss—that engrave Edward's whole self, and the boy shudders in recognition.

He nods. Jordan was given the series as a birthday gift and then had the idea to take the books out of the library as well, so he and his brother could read them at the same time. They lay in their bunks for hours, for several weeks on end, mowing through one book after another. Jordan would call out from the top bunk: Holy cow, Eddie, are you on page 202 yet?

When your love for a person is so profound that it's part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones, and your skin.

wouldn't have done that to you"—Edward looks at his uncle and then over at Shay; this applies to her too—"because I know what it's like to be left behind.

for a person is so profound that it's part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones,

In the moonlight, though, the pain is revealed to be love. The emotions are entwined; they are the two sides of the same gleaming coin.

Mrs. Cox had also texted him on his birthday to say that

He offered this stranger what looked like everything: his joy, his love, his brain, his complete attention. He gave that girl a face that Bruce, who has studied his son every single day of his life, had never seen. Never even knew existed.

we're skeptical and filled with cynicism, then we see that in each other. And it's so important that we try to live in the world that we want to live in.

together. He'd always assumed openness was synonymous with danger

that person is wonderful, he or she is still somewhat ready, and so are the people who loved them.

Sylvie and her sisters had known themselves under their father's gaze. And with that gaze gone, the threads that had tied their family so tightly together had loosened.

How Leo Tolstoy had inspired Mahatma Gandhi, who had in turn inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. William