Quotes About Connection

A wise man once said that in order to communicate, you have to be able to speak in someone else's language.

Black female security officer at the Charlotte airport: How you doing, sweetheart? Me: That's so nice of you to call me sweetheart. Her: All right, baby. Keep it safe.

I had discovered, or rediscoverd, that crying is a pleasure—that it can be a pleasure beyond all reckoning if your head is pressed in your mother's waist and her hands are on your back, and if she happens to be wearing clean clothes.

My confessions did nothing to alter this situation, but for the first time in my life I felt that somebody actually knew me. Three somebodies, to be exact. Two were roaming the highway in a Cadillac, doing God knows what with a CB radio, but the other was as close to me as my own skin, and I could now feel the undiluted pleasure of her company.

You look like some cousin of mine." The latter would work only if you were Asian, but even then it's a little creepy, the implication being "the cousin I have always wanted to undress and ejaculate on.

Perhaps I've grown less likable over the years, or maybe I've just forgotten how to meet people. The initial introduction — the shaking-hands part — I can still manage. It's the follow-up that throws me. Who calls whom, and how often? What if you decide after the second or third meeting that you don't really like this person? Up to what point are you allowed to back out? I used to know these things, but now they're a mystery.

It's common to be misread by people who don't know you.

The two of you grew apart,' my mother would say. She made it sound as if we'd veered off in different directions, though in fact we had the exact same destination. I just never made it.

What brought us together was a love of nature, or, more specifically, of catching things and unintentionally killing them.

There are few greater pleasures than feeling proud of someone, of worrying you might burst with it, especially if that someone is related to you and therefore part of your organization. I've always thought of my family that way, as a company. What's good for one of us is good for all of us. Our jobs are to advance the name Sedaris.

Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.

You know how mice are—anything for a little affection.

How does someone undress you with his eyes when you're already undressed?" I asked. "By that point what's he looking at, your soul?

She regarded her grandchildren as if we were savings bonds, something certain to multiply in value through the majesty of arithmetic. Ya Ya and her husband had produced one child, who in turn had yielded five, a wealth of hearty field hands destined to return to the village, where we might crush olives or stucco windmills or whatever it was they did in her hometown. She was always pushing up our sleeves to examine our muscles, frowning at the sight of our girlish, uncallused hands.

I'm the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of people I've never even met.

Every time I see him could be the last, and the pressure I feel to make our conversation meaningful paralyzes me.

We're like a pair of bad trapeze artists, reaching for each other's hands and missing every time. Meanwhile the stage crew has gathered below us and begun to roll up the safety net.

For you, anything." And as I did as I was instructed, I realized it was no different than playing a wind instrument. There were other musicians behind other curtains, and I swore I could hear them chiming in, the group of us forming God's own horn section. I'm not sure how long I lay there, blissed-out and farting.

On Maui, one November, Hugh and I went swimming, and turned to find a gigantic sea turtle coming up between us. As gentle as a cow she was, and with a cow's dopey, almost lovesick expression on her face. That, to me, was worth the entire trip, worth my entire life, practically. For to witness majesty, to find yourself literally touched by it—isn't that what we've all been waiting for?

She lit a cigarette and spent a moment identifying with the smoldering match.

It's so hard to predict which friends will last and which will fade away. Quite often I'd move and lose half the contacts in my address book, people I thought would be with me forever. It's not that we outgrew one another. They just couldn't be bothered to put a stamp on a letter. Or I couldn't. Of course it's easier now with email.

Days later, I saw an X-ray of a Bose speaker inside someone. "And it was still connected to Bluetooth," the woman who showed it to me whispered.

I can see him doing the same thing I am, trying to make some sort of connection. We're like a pair of bad trapeze artists, reaching for each other's hands and missing every time.

even then that without them, I was nothing. Not a son or a brother but just a boy—and