Quotes About Connection

flowed into and from one another, and then on to yet others, all of them tied in some way to the city in which they lived. Though they were Venetian, the conversation took place in Italian

It would be nice if we could choose the people we love, but love chooses them.

I remember that's the way he was before we came out here. But then it was as if we'd come to a magic country where people changed into the person you wanted them to be, and all of a sudden my father became quiet and patient and had time to read to me.

Again, she put her face in her hands and wiped away the years, then let them return and looked at him.

I'm glad I'm sitting down, Guido. You make my knees go all wobbly.

He looked at his wedding ring, twirled it around once or twice with his thumb. What pleasure it gave him to touch it, as though it were some sort of cult object, invested with magic powers, always near at hand, like a friendly spirit.

More than anything I was relieved that in my unfamiliar babbling-and-wanting-to-talk state I'd stopped myself from blurting the thing I'd never said, even though it was something we both knew well enough without me saying out loud to him in the street - which was, of course, I love you.

The dead appear to us in dreams because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star...

I was fascinated by strangers, wanted to know what food they ate and what dishes they ate it from, what movies they watched and what music they listened to, wanted to look under their beds and in their secret drawers and night tables and inside the pockets of their coats.

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them...

We looked at each other and just laughed; everything was hysterically funny, even the playground slide was smiling at us, and at some point, deep in the night, when we were swinging on the jungle gym and showers of sparks were flying out of our mouths, I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.

isn't the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?

The center of my earth is you

She looked up at me, her eyes large with compassion, with understanding of the solitude and incivility of grief.

But though it was the most resonant and real-seeming thing that had happened in a long time, I didn't want to spoil it by talking about it...

with a grief no less sharp for not being intimate with its object.

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.

Maybe that's why I tend to equate physical beauty with qualities with which it has absolutely nothing to do. I see a pretty mouth or a moody pair of eyes and imagine all sorts of deep affinities, private kinships. Never mind that half a dozen jerks are clustered round the same person, just because they've been duped by the same pair of eyes.

We looked at each other, for a long strange moment that I've never forgotten, actually, like two animals meeting at twilight, during which some clear, personable spark seemed to fly up through his eyes and I saw the creature he really was—and he, I believe, saw me. For an instant we were wired together and humming, like two engines on the same circuit.

and how precious was life that two such friends, in so big world, should find each other again after so great separation?

Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.

I do not now nor did I ever have anything in common with any of them, nothing except a knowledge of Greek and the year of my life I spent in their company. And if love is a thing held in common, I suppose we had that in common, too, though I realize that might sound odd in light of the story I am about to tell.

I loved her every minute of every day, heart and mind and soul and all of it, and it was getting late and I wanted the place never to close, never.

no matter how hard I tried to wish him out of the picture—for there he always was, in my hands and my voice and my walk...