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Quotes About Connection

Well then, it is as you please. This is the dysfunction talking. This is the disease talking. This is how much I miss you talking. This is the deepest blue, talking, talking, always talking to you.
~ Maggie Nelson
We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
She liked the way his smile took a long time to arrive and just as long to leave.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
If she was liquid, she would drink her; if she was a gas, she would breathe her; if she was a pill, she would down her'; if she was a dress, she would wear her; a plate, she would lick her clean.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
She glanced up to see that her mother was doing the same and she wanted to say, Do you think of her, do you still catch yourself listening for her footsteps, for her voice, for the sound of her breathing at night, because I do, all the time. I still think that one day I might wake and she will be there, next to me, again; there will have been some wrinkle or pleat in time and we will be back to where we were, when she was living and breathing.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
Two women in a room. One seated, one standing
~ Maggie O'Farrell
Did my daughter appear to me a decade and a half before she was born? I like to think so. There she was, looping back through time to brush past a person not yet ready to be her mother--nowhere near ready, if I'm honest--tipping me the wink that she would one day arrive in my life. Readying me, perhaps, for the road ahead, sowing the seeds for all the strength, compassion and resilience required for her existence.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
Why would she ever want to behold anything else, when she could be taking in the sight of Susanna's ears, like the pale folds of roses, the winglike sweep of her tiny eyebrows, the dark hair, which clings to her crown as if painted there with a brush? There is nothing more exquisite to her than her child: the world could not possibly contain a more perfect being, anywhere, ever.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
I mean', he says, 'that I don´t think you have any idea what it is like to be married to someone like you.' 'Like me?' 'Someone who knows everything about you, before you even know it yourself. Someone who can just loo at you and divine your deepest secrets, just with a glance. Someone who can tell what you are about to say- and what you might not- before you say it. It is' he says, 'both a joy and a curse.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
She had the strange and unaccustomed sensation of having been observed and, perhaps, understood. How odd it was that the person who seemed to comprehend her, to see into her very soul, should be a man who had glimpsed her only once.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
She feels it; he feels it. They know it and they know each other's thoughts and they sense each other's actions and fears. She does not know why this is or where it might lead, but she knows it must remain hidden, and silent as the tongue in his head.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
Qué curioso, piensa ella, tener a otro tan cerca: la escala desbordante de las pestañas, de los párpados cerrados, del pelo de la frente, todo mirando hacia el mismo sitio.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
How is it these children, these young women came from her? What relation do they bear to the small beings she once nursed and dandled and washed?
~ Maggie O'Farrell
In their apartment, he lets her take his hand, lets her lead him from the fire to a chair, lets his eyes lose focus, lets her rub her fingers through his hair, and she can feel him switch from one character to another; she can sense that other, big-house, self melt off him, like wax sliding from a lit candle, revealing the man within.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
How were they to know that Hamnet was the pin holding them together? That without him they would all fragment and fall apart, like a cup shattered on the floor?
~ Maggie O'Farrell
She has created this moment – no one else – and yet, now it is happening, she finds that it is entirely at odds with what she desires. What she desires is for him to stay at her side, for his hand to remain in hers. For him to be there, in the house, when she brings this baby into the world. For them to be together.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
And now there is this—this fit. It is altogether unlike anything she has felt before. It makes her think of a hand drawing on a glove, of a lamb slithering wet from a ewe, an axe splitting open a log, a key turning in an oiled lock. How, she wonders, as she looks into the face of the tutor, can anything fit so well, so exactly, with such a sense of rightness?
~ Maggie O'Farrell
Whoever it used to belong to wishes her
~ Maggie O'Farrell
Eliza doesn't say that she worries about Anne, all alone, so young, without her, wherever she may be. That for a long time she lay awake at night, whispering her name, just in case she was listening, from wherever she was, in case the sound of Eliza's voice was a comfort to her. The pain of wondering if Anne was distressed somewhere and that she, Eliza, was unable to hear her, unable to reach her.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
moment. He gives a half-smile. 'That is true,' he
~ Maggie O'Farrell
She sees the cloud above him grow darker, gather its horrible rank strength. She wants to reach across the table then, to lay her hand on his arm. She wants to say, I am here. But what if her words are not enough? What if she is not enough of a salve for his nameless pain? For the first
~ Maggie O'Farrell
So it follows, of course, that she will be here now, in whatever form she can manage. Agnes does not need to turn her head, does not want to frighten her away. It is enough to know that she is there, manifest, hovering, insubstantial. I see you, she thinks. I know you are here.
~ Maggie O'Farrell
He inhales: the aroma of wood, of lime, of something sweet and fibrous. Also a chalky, musky undertone. And the woman beside him: he can smell her hair and skin, one of which carries the faint scent of rosemary
~ Maggie O'Farrell
For the pestilence to reach Warwickshire, England, in the summer of 1596, two events need to occur in the lives of two separate people, and then these people need to meet.
~ Maggie O'Farrell