Quotes About Connection

All she knew was that his smile lit up the morning as the rising sun does. For a moment, looking at his face, it was as if her ribs were empty, hollow, as if the world had stopped forever while she looked into his eyes as blue as the bellflowers that grew wild across the meadows. For a moment, just until her beating heart had returned to her chest, Birle had thought she understood everything about herself she had never understood before.

Maybeth always did that, brought her good news to the table and held it out, like a little kid holding out her hand, then unwrapping her fingers to show some treasure, some stone or flower. She held her good news out to them all, giving it to them.

Miss Koala, the Eastern Star, and the Simón Bolívar.

She went on and on, until Jeff had a sense of family spreading out around them endlessly, and only an hour later, when she was lost in reminiscences, did he understand that the names she mentioned, the people she spoke of, were most of them long ago dead. The family spread not out and around, but back, back into time.

He felt […] as if he'd just gotten a letter, out of the blue, from somebody wise enough to know the truth, from everybody, or at least everybody who mattered. "Hello," the letter said. "Hello, Jeff Greene, I've been watching you and I like you and I want to know you better. This is just to say I'm glad you're alive in the world." The list of signatures, he thought, would include his own.

They wouldn't know that grief had come down up on him unbearably, and he must be alone to put his arms around her, and feel her arms around him, to take enough comfort from grieving so that he could return to finish the business of the day.

Griff couldn't, as Oriel could, gather men to him at a glance, seal them to him with a word. He had himself been the first gathered, the first sealed.

Looked at from where she sat unsleeping, the sky seemed walled in by forest. It looked as if there was a river of sky matching the water river below.

They turned, wiping back sweat-dampened hair. Their grandmother had a cantaloupe cut up into thick slices. She had arranged the slices on a metal cookie sheet.

She held her right hand out to Elske, as if they were two merchants closing on a sale, and she bowed her head to Elske, as if they were two swordsmen ending a match, and she looked Elske in the eye, as if they were Wolfer captains, about to risk their lives in battle.

Language is the only homeland.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.

Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.

Human love, human trust, are always perilous, because they break down. The greater the love, the greater the trust, and the greater the peril, the greater the disaster. Because to place absolute trust on another human being is in itself a disaster, both ways, since each human being is a ship that must sail its own course, even if it go in company with another ship.... And yet, love is the greatest thing between human beings.

Los hombres y las mujeres deberían saber que no es posible unirse totalmente en este mundo. En el beso más íntimo, en la caricia más tierna existe un foso, por estrecho que sea. Y frente a él deben inclinarse y someterse con respeto. [...] Él es él y ella es ella y esa distancia nunca se salvará.

And all the time she felt the reflection of his hopelessness in her. She couldn't quite, quite love in hoplessness. And he, being hopeless, couldn't ever love at all.

It was as if thousands and thousands of little roots and threads of consciousness in him and her had grown together into a tangled mass, till they could crowd no more, and the plant was dying. Now quietly, subtly, she was unravelling the tangle of his consciousness and hers, breaking the threads gently, one by one, with patience and impatience to get clear.

Aren't I enough for you?' she asked. 'No,' he said. 'You are enough for me, as far as a woman is concerned. You are all women to me. But I wanted a man friend, as eternal as you and I are eternal.' (Women in Love)

Their words were only accidents in the mutual silence.

This is why we cannot love in the common sense. Somehow with you I cannot long be trivial, and, you know, to be always beyond this mortal state would be to lose it.

The arguments, the discussions were the great thing: the love-making and connection were only a sort of primitive reversion and a bit of an anti-climax.

There had been nothing between them, and yet they had come together, exchanging their nakedness repeatedly.... She had never seen him, he had never seen her, they had met in the dark and had fought in the dark, not knowing whom they met or whom they fought. And now she saw, and turned silent in seeing. For she had been wrong. She had said he was something he was not; she had felt familiar with him. Whereas he was apart all the while, living as she never lived, feeling as she never felt.

Man has made such a mighty struggle to feel at home on the face of the earth, without even yet succeeding.

He felt again irresistibly drawn to her. He felt there was a secret bond, a secret thread between him and her, something very exclusive, which shut out everybody else and made him and her possess each other in secret.