Quotes About Connection

When the Self dissolves into a world of separate selves and death becomes real, love becomes a pact with grief; what is gained then is the inescapability poignant fact of individuality. There will never be another you, and I love the stubborn particularity of you because you will disappear.

Christmas Eve, I give him packages which I open for him, since the bows and paper represent more labor than he could manage: music videos by the Nashville singers he thinks particularly sexy, fleece-lined slippers decorated with images of bacon and eggs, and a book about breeds of dogs. He says he wishes he had something for me to open, but I don't want anything except to have him here. There's nothing more he could give me than his life, right now, his being with me.

Isn't that it, to be yourself and somehow, to belong?

We know that energy cannot be destroyed, but goes shape-shifting through the world. What was once in some portion that star is me now, and later I may be some strong supporting cells in the neck of an August lily, or the glint in the stem of a new-blown piece of glass. If our lot is mutability of form, then why be surprised that our energies might not be refracted and recurrent in the world.

I didn't judge; it was as if that were part of my purpose: I wanted to know the men who moved through my nights like passing comets, wanted them to feel the pleasure of being known.

Those lists of men in Whitman's papers--a collector's catalog, a record of the body's travels? How else will I know the world, if not by touching as much of it as possible, finding in the bodies of my lovers and fellows my coordinates?

Desire I think has less to do with possession than with participation

When you are lying in bed angry with your backs turned towards each other, imagine Satan sleeping in the space between you.

I'd go home to a wife whom I was not sexually enjoying.

Love one another, push the perimeter of this glorious language.

We need to learn not simply to read books but to allow ourselves to be read by them.

Anyone who has ever fallen hard will understand. The magic of those early days, when you are consumed by each other, when your whole body thrums in the presence of this new significant other and aches when you're apart. ~Here To Stay, Mark Edwards

This was life, really lived, a passage of magic that would flash before our eyes when we died. And to share it, to live through these experiences together, meant that Laura and I were closer than ever.

One of the greatest joys to me is making every single person in the audience laugh and forget their worries.

When we stop distancing ourselves from the pain in the world, our own or others, we create the possibility of a new experience, one that often surprises because of how much joy, connection, or relief it yields. Destruction may continue, but humanity shines through.

One of the age-old truths about love is that while it offers unparalleled opportunities for union and the lifting of ego boundaries, it also washes us up on the shores of the loved one's otherness. Sooner or later, love makes us feel inescapably separate.

we have two families in life. The one we're born with that shares our blood. Another we meet along the way that's willing to give its blood for us.

We have two families in life. One were born with that shares our blood. Another we meet along the way that's willing to give it's life for us.

Don't make another's pain the source of your own happiness.

Life is not random. There are no coincidences. Human beings are more than mere molecules bouncing around life without reason. We bounce around life with a purpose. We are meant to bounce off specific other human beings during our lives, other human beings who will change the content and course of our lives. We are meant to be exactly who we are.

Ben had kept up with his son all this time. But his son had never returned his calls or come to visit, convinced that at his age he no longer needed a father. He was wrong.

if he could take Elizabeth Brice to orgasm just once—just freaking once!—her indifferent attitude toward him would instantly morph into extreme love.

Life is not random. There are no coincidences. Human beings are more than mere molecules bouncing around life without reason. We bounce around life with a purpose. We are meant to bounce off specific other human beings during our lives, other human beings who will change the content and course of our lives.

you're not going to find true love in the personals.