Quotes About Connection

He couldn't tell her that what we wanted now, more than anything, was to fall asleep beside her. No touching, no kissing, no stimulation. No sensation, no consciousness. Just the act of sleeping beside someone you liked to be with. Maybe that was love.

The love between a brother and sister just over a year apart in age held fast. It wasn't twinship, and it wasn't romance, but it was more like a passionate loyalty to a dying brand.

Part of the beauty of love was that you didn't need to explain it to anyone else. You could refuse to explain.

But it's never just been the journals that have made the difference, I don't think. It's also the way the students are with one another . . . the way they talk about books and authors and themselves. Not just their problems, but their passions too. The way they form a little society and discuss whatever matters to them. Books light the fire—whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.

Standing in the heat and noise, facing the rows of bent heads, Ethan Figman willed himself to leave that long sleep in which you dream that the inhuman things that people do to one another on a distant continent have nothing to do with the likes of you.

But all she could feel was that he was her friend, her wonderful and gifted friend.

A child just wants to love her parents and to be loved, and it seems like it should be simple to do that, but sometimes it's not.

Even when I can't relate on a personal level, she makes me know what she feels, and that's really something. To find out what another human being feels, a person who isn't you; to get a look under the hood, so to speak. A deep look inside. That's what writing is supposed to do.

I've decided that there should be a national holiday once a year, when grown children have to let their parents tuck them in one more time.

Part of the beauty of love was that you didn't need to explain it to anyone else. You could refuse to explain. With love, apparently you didn't necessarily feel the need to explain anything at all.

Our relationship was like one of those YouTube videos of a flower frowning in speeded-up motion. All of the sudden we were in love.

Marriage, I don't think, is like that. It's something else. It's a thing in which you get to see your closest friend become more of who she already is.

We are all here on this earth for only one go-round. And everyone thinks their purpose is just to find their passion. But perhaps our purpose is also to find out what other people need. And maybe the world does not actually need to see you,

If Jules or Ash needed to see each other, then the two husbands stepped aside. It almost seemed gratifying to the men to step aside in those moments, remembering what women could have together that men rarely could.

She had seen that look on the faces of lovers in restaurants, on the secret: a secret, meaningful glance exchanged between two people. There seemed to be a conspiracy of passion in the world.

After you slept with a woman, she took away with her a small hunk of you. It wasn't bad, as long as the relationship went on. It was something you didn't mind giving up, because it would always be close by. It was only when things ended that you really felt the loss.

for all that parents ever wanted, really, was for you to love their child the way they did.

Love transcended breath, eczema, fear of sex, and an imbalance in physical appearance. If love was real, then these bodily, human details could seem insignificant.

Love was a fish factory—love, with all its murk and stink. You had to really love someone to live with him or her in close quarters.

Jules listened to this soliloquy in grim silence; she hardly knew what to say. Ash was describing an enclosed world that Jules too had been given a chance to enter, but hadn't wanted to. She still didn't want to, but the descriptions of the closeness and intensity of that world only increased her loneliness. "Go on," was all she said.

Love is when you feel, like, oh, oh, my heart hurts," Alby said. "Or like when you see a dog and you feel like you have to touch its head." He looked at Greer. "Like the way Cory is touching your head now." Cory stopped the movement of his hand, just froze there in her hair.

the Siamese-twinship of marriage

We are all here on this earth for only one go-round. And everyone thinks their purpose is just to find their passion. But perhaps our purpose is also to find out what other people need.

Does that scare you? Are you afraid that if I take away the mysterious part of you, I won't like you anymore?