Quotes About Connection

We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?

A person who believes ... that things fit: that there is a whole of which one is a part, and that in being a part one is whole: such a person has no desire whatever, at any time, to play God. Only those who have denied their being yearn to play at it.

All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens.

There are souls ... whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never get weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus.

Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.

Ignoraba que usted pensara ir a Petersburgo. ¿Por qué va? —preguntó Ana, dejando caer su mano, mientras una alegría imposible de contener iluminó su rostro. —¿Por qué voy? —repitió él mirándola fijamente—. Usted bien sabe que voy sólo para estar junto a usted; no puedo evitarlo.

You are what you share.

If we love a person, we love him, and whatever he may do will not affect our love. It may cause us pain if he does evil, because we love him; it may cause us sorrow and suffering; but it cannot affect our love.

Like storytelling, that incessant loving rush of explaining and repositioning and telling again, all for the sake of finding something shared, something mutually recognized -- so interpreting seemed to me. It seemed a kind of goodness.

I have been too fond of stories.

Food and shelter are very nice, but without stories to hear and tell, we might as well be the walking dead.

The occasion's enormity: The birth of a friendship being no less momentous than the instant of falling in love.

Fakery is a vital currency in our social intercourse. That's not necessarily all bad. A lot of the time we pretend as a way of fortifying or easing connections. When we feign recognition, for example, or delight in seeing someone, or gladness to go out of our way, these are acts of goodwill. At best, pretense can be a form of kindness.

Wally gives gifts all the time, at the drop of a hat, little, odd ones. The gift not so much in the item itself as in the transaction, the act of passing something along.

We are none of us free. We are tethered by our connections to other people, those we know as well as those we will never meet. What tethers us is our ability our responsibility to imagine them, to fathom their lives, their circumstances, what we have in common, and what sets us apart.

He spoke slowly; I had a sense he was groping between words for the thread of his own thoughts.

Some people see their spouses as separate from them,' Megan says. 'And some people see their spouses as an extension of them, and that informs their attitude and behavior.

He was completely interested in humanizing technology.

Cats don't forget. Cats know when they are needed and loved. These two would be better medicine for Minnie than anything that came out of a pill bottle.

At some point you have to love in order to be lovable.

If you find a woman who makes you whole, do what ever it takes to get her and hold on tight.

You can look at her and see how beautiful she is. That's obvious. But that's attraction, not love. She has amazing depth and humility. At the same time she can make me laugh. When I'm with her, the world is better than I thought it could be.

No matter where you are or what you're doing throughout the day, your heart should always be at home.

The Africans wouldn't consider it a real visit unless they ate.