Quotes About Connection

I am filled with gratitude at the astonishing fact of being married to someone I enjoy talking to, someone with whom I can't imagine ever running out of things to say.

People recognized you or they didn't, and it was unrelated to knowing you. Knowing you could just be your name or the street you lived on, your father's job. Recognizing you was understanding you had thoughts in your head, finding the same things funny or excruciating, remembering what you'd said months or even years after you'd said

We both were smiling, and I loved him, I loved him completely, and I knew that he loved me back. I could feel it. That moment- inside it, I could anticipate the thing I most wanted and I could be beyond it, it had happened already, and I was ensconced in the rich reassurance of knowing it was certain and definite.

Approaching each other, him from the gym, me from the library- this was when I walked down the aisle and he was waiting, this was when we made love, it was every anniversary, every reunion in an airport or train station, every reconciliation after a quarrel. This was the whole of our lives together.

And really, what has stayed with me from that vacation as much as my own suspicious, petty agonizing is my father on the esplanade just after our arrival. The wind blew his hair, and he was fidgety with delight, straining to explain to my mother and me exactly why the Mighty Mac was so impressive. I wondered at the time—I wonder still—if that was the happiest my father had ever been.

No, we were still in the same room, both of us having to breathe and speak in the aftermath of her wink.

His panel was on the digital divide

To be with him in this way was an almost intolerable ecstasy.

At last, after a minute or so, Bill said, "It's beyond me how anyone could have you as a daughter and not be bursting with pride.

So often, people let you down; so often, situations turn out disappointingly. But occasionally someone recognizes, acknowledges, your private and truest self.

When they left the bar, before parting ways in Port Authority, they stood on the corner of Forty-second Street and Seventh Avenue and continued talking; there were between them always an infinite number of subjects to be addressed and dissected, mulled over and mocked and revised.

And if I was looking at that, would I pick you out from everyone else and say, 'That's the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen'? If I'm being honest, no. But human beings aren't static images. We're dynamic and kinetic, and it's like I said before—right away, I wanted to talk to you, and every time I've talked to you since I've always wanted to keep talking to you.

Recognizing you was understanding you had thoughts in your head, finding the same things funny or excruciating, remembering what you'd said months or even years after you'd said it.

his blue eyes were intense, and

Oh, how different my life would have been had I not grown up in the same house with my grandmother, how much narrower and blander!

A sense of humor is always a bonus. As with dinner companions, so it is with short stories.

And the things you said, the walk from chapel to the schoolhouse, your backpack, tests, these were a bridge running above the rushing water of what you actually felt. The goal was: learn to ignore what's down below. Fine if you met someone else who was the same as you, but you had to realize that nothing another person could do would make you feel better about any of it.

This was the problem with me - I didn't know how to talk to people without asking them questions. Some people seemed to find me peculiar and some people were so happy to discuss themselves that they didn't even notice, but either way, it made conversation draining. While the other person's mouth moved, I'd try to think of the next thing to ask.

They only half-jokingly speculated about whether they were the last two single people from their high school class

I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will -- that is the part that's almost unbearable.

It's very, very simple. You sit, either in a chair or on a prayer stool or mat, and allow your heart to open toward that invisible but always present Origin of all that exists.

schmoozes the customers, brings light and warmth to the

One of the great benefits of being married is always having someone to tie one's tie.

Crafty Collins took up with him. You wouldn't have thought they had a thing in common. I mean, Crafty, he had enough upstairs. He wasn't stupid by many a long mile. But this Bates bloke, he was college educated and everything. Smart as a whip. Well, he