Quotes About Connection

Aunt Lucinda, Miss Bell and whatever neighbor has a breath or two left at the end of the day for sitting and running our mouths.

And when we pressed our heads to each other's hearts how did we not hear Carmen McRae singing? In Angela's fisted hands, Billie Holiday staggered past us and we didn't know her name. Nina Simone told us how beautiful we were and we didn't hear her voice.

As they grabbed each other's arms and bounce-walked down the hall, I was sure no ghost mothers existed in their pasts. I truly believed they were standing steadily in the world.

He had never imagined a love as deep and endless as this.

Sometimes I'm just sitting in my room and a song will come on the radio that stops something inside of me, makes me sit up straight on my bed and listen. Sometimes, it's the piano chords, a sweet riff that has all eighty-eight keys talking. Sometimes it's the drums—high hat telling a story—I don't know how to explain the way music moves through my brain and my blood and my bones.

But what I know now is this: Look at your grandmother's face. Remember the lines. Touch her cheekbones. Hold the memory of her in your fingers, in your eyes, in your mind. It might be all you get to keep.

When I sit down beside my mother, she shivers. When I touch Ellie's shoulders, she smiles like she knows it's me. Maybe she does. Who could have told me that the wind was some passed-on soul stopping to touch your face, your hands, your hair. Who knew a surprising cool breeze was someone who had gone before you saying, 'You're loved.

Now out on the floor, Melody and Malcolm were being joined by their friends, other babies turned into teenagers becoming a crush of butt-length braids and perfectly shaped fades, long painted nails lacing into lotioned teen-boy hands. He shook out his shoulders, realized his own hands were sweating. Most of the grown-ups were tapping their feet, some even moving in to dance beside the young people.

Even if you turn your back on the world you left, you're still pulled toward it, you're still turning around--always--to look behind you. To make sure everyone's okay.

As we dance, I am not Melody, I am a narrative, someone's almost forgotten story. Remembered.

They ate bologna-and-cheese sandwiches, barbecue potato chips, and Oreo cookies sitting on the library steps. Washing it down with Coca-Cola. Years later, Iris wouldn't remember what they talked about as they ate, but she'd remember CathyMarie's laughter, the shape and warmth of her calloused hands.

God, how he loved every single cell dividing.

They laughed at Eddie Murphy movies, and on the now too rare occasion when Iris let him make love to her, it felt like their bodies were holding on to the earth. When he kissed her, he wanted her to swallow him, wanted to be all the way inside of her—his love was deep like that.

When the trumpeter picked up a solo and the music lifted past where the voices had just been, I felt like my ribs were shattering. There was so much in all of it. Just. So. Much. I wanted to say to Iris, It all feels like it's trying to drift out into somebody's eternity.

Trust me, it takes talent to converse with a cat

Thank you," she murmured a few minutes after their breathing had normalized. "For what?" he laughed, tilting his chin to his chest so he could see her face as he pushed back the half ton of hair that had obscured it. "For answering my question.

He looked up abruptly, almost as though he had sensed her entering the room. She found herself suddenly afraid that he had the ability to do exactly that.

I am smart enough to realize that people are the most trying creatures on earth and we drain energy from one another in wasteful useless ways and that would make those who need that energy from you pay a price.

Friendship for me is made from a tapestry of personalities, each of whom shares a part of all I care about.

I'll always remember our first night together, you so flushed and shy, me knowing what I know but scared too because you are the first one I loved. We poured our loneliness into each other and filled the emptiness and dark corners of this place with joy. I think of your long straight back, your strong legs, your hair on the pillow, your dark eyes close, and say your name over and over...it is the sound of bells.

It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence.

Lastly, say to me, if you can, with feelings as tender as mine for you: my dear Beelzebub, I adore you...

how can I say 'I love you', if I know the love is you .. the word 'love' either as a verb or a noun would be destroyed in front of you

I would like to write you so simply, so simply, so simply. Without having anything ever catch the eye, excepting yours alone, ... so that above all the language remains self-evidently secret, as if it were being invented at every step, and as if it were burning immediately