Quotes About Connection

My prevailing interest has been in the world as a whole, and in the place of a person in a larger setting than one defined by national boundaries.

Thus a translation of a translation brought us together, but I can see now that we were still very far apart, farther apart indeed than languages, even though we had laughed together, for our laugher was cruel, as laughter often is. I was laughing at the awkwardness of a Chinese mind, the translator's; Su-ling at the awkwardness of a Western mind, mine.

Every evening my wife makes us martinis and we talk about our days as I cook dinner and our children ignore us. It is a great pleasure in our lives: this rediscovering of each other as our children age. It is our indulgence.

You are sleeping and farting and snorting and flaking and puking in close proximity, and there is no way to hide all of these sounds and smells from your beloved. You see your partner unhinge their jaw to say the worst things, or shed their disgusting skin to become something new, and you have to accept and forgive these things. A marriage, like a python, is expensive.

I enjoy being seen and recognized. So many people go through life without being seen or recognized at all, not even by their own families. So I know what a gift it is.

I believe that before we can truly dialogue with one another we must first perceive intellectually, and then at the profoundest emotiomal level, that there is no Other - that the Other is simply Oneself in all the significant essentials. This alone is the key that can unlock the prison of culture. It will neutralize the poisons of the stereotype that allow men to go on benevolently justifying their abuses against humanity.

I told them good night and returned to my room, less lonely and warmed by the brief contact with others like me who felt the need to be reassured that an eye could show something besides suspicion or hate

All I care about in this goddamn life are me, my drums, and you.

The desire to never leave your side, the desire to never see you again. The desire to see your face asleep on the pillow beside my face and to see your eyes open in the morning when I lie next to you—just watching you, waiting for you to wake up.

How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.

Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you

there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.

When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.

If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind?

I think about you more and more, but I don't waste my time - or yours - thinking about who you were before I knew you.

You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.

No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen...You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.

They all settled into being the kind of friends when they heard from each other.... or when they occasionally got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another.

When people die, Vargas - I mean the people you will always remember, the ones who changed your life - they never really go away, Pepe told the young doctor.

friends were more important than lovers - not least for the fact that friendships generally lasted longer than relationships.

We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly-as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth-the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.

there was no better company for an especially personal revelation than the company of virtual strangers.

Garp discovered that when you are writing something, everything seems related to everything else.

Only the chicken-lover will understand me. He will give me a kindly look, maybe mildly desirous. His eyes will tell me: You might look a lot better with some reddish-brown feathers.