Quotes About Connection

I am always translating, he thinks: if not language to language, then person to person.

I remembered the young man with his broad white smile and his ashen hair streaked with gold; the basted perfection of his firm flesh, and the grace of his hand clasping mine. I slotted the notes back inside, slid my purse away, and wondered: which of my defects did he notice first?

You said,' Camille protested, 'that when you wanted to get on terms with Gabrielle you cultivated her mother. It's true, everybody saw you doing it, boasting in Italian and rolling your eyes and doing your tempestuous southerner impersonation.

He would like her to shorten her account, but he understands her need to tell it over, moment by moment, to say it out loud. It is like a package of words she is making, to hand to him: this is yours now.

All the rivers run into the sea, but the seas are not yet full.

How close we hug our enemies! They are our familiars, our other selves.

The cardinal, in his days as master of the realm, had spoken of God as if He were a distant policy adviser from whom he heard quarterly: gnomic in his pronouncements, sometimes forgetful, but worth a retainer on account of his experience. At times he sent Him special requests, which the less well-connected call prayers;

I am willing, though, to tear up the timetable and take some new routes; and I know I shall find, at some unlikely terminus, a hand that is meant to rest in mine.

Gardiner, he thinks. It may not be proper to call

When they are alone, she lets him unlace her bodice.' 'At least he doesn't call you to do it.' 'He pulls down her shift and kisses her breasts.' 'Good man if he can find them.

Paper reassures me, its touch. It's what you respect.

think women carry this faculty into later life: the faculty for love, I mean. Men will never understand it till they stop confusing love with sex, which will be never. Even today, there are ten or twenty women I love: for a turn of phrase or wrist, for a bruised-looking ankle where the veins have blossomed out, for a squeeze of the hand or for a voice on the end of the phone. I would no more go to bed with any of them than I would drown myself; and drowning is my most feared form of death.

And I begin to see it. How a man may hardly know his sister, and meet her as a grown woman. She is like himself, yet not. She is familiar, yet piques his interest. One day his brotherly embrace is a little longer than usual. The business progresses from there. Perhaps neither party feels they are doing anything wrong, till some frontier is crossed.

Gregory takes a bite of his pastry; Bella leans against his shin and adores him.

Very helpful, I must say. Look at them in the eye and shout, and they understand every word..." (Mr. Warbeck in Sienna, talking about local Italians.)

He's an artist in London. We don't see him much." Tom gave him one of his quick, considering glances and asked, "Doesn't he live with you?" "No," said Indigo, finally saying out loud what he had known now for a long, long time. "Not really. Not anymore.

Michael allowed himself to look at Caddy for the first time since she had climbed into the car. It was a moment that he always put off for as long as possible because his concentration was never quite the same afterwards.

Far away can be too far away, when the wrong people are left behind.

People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn't know were there, even the ones they wouldn't have thought to call beautiful themselves.

Writing. Love is writing.

If you come back I'll show you a secret," said Heinz.

She's wearing one of the dresses of ... of the people ... who lived here before.

The soul is the greening life force of the flesh, for the body grows and prospers through her, just as the earth becomes fruitful when it is moistened. The soul humidifies the body so it does not dry out, just like the rain which soaks into the earth.

At the end of the day, you know, love does not happen between two perfect people as much as we would wish.