Quotes About Connection

Wie sehr wir uns auch bemühten, den anderen zu verstehen, es gab immer etwas, das sich unserem Verständnis entzog. Und je mehr wir darüber redeten, desto deprimierender wurde es.

Ibland sätter jag händerna mot väggen och försöker föreställa mig hur det är utanför. Jag tänker att det kanske kan gå att uppfatta någonting genom händernas beröring med väggen. Sådant som vindriktning, kyla, fukt, platsen du är på, vattnets porlande floden. Men det går aldrig. Väggen är bara en vägg. Det finns ingenting bakom den, den är inte sammankopplad med någonting.

If you read a novel to the end, then it's over. I would never want to do something as wasteful as that. I'd much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever.

There, behind your heartbeat, have you stored up all my lost memories?

And what will happen if words disappear?" I

I couldn't reach him from here even if I tried.

I don't know. Maybe there's a place out there where people whose hearts aren't empty can go on living.

I was always watching you." This could have been a breathless declaration of love or a final farewell.

Man sagte mir, die Welt sei vernetzt, die Entfernung spiele keine Rolle mehr. Es schien mir aber so, als ob nicht die Entfernung, sondern die Nähe keine Rolle mehr spiele. Auch jemanden, der nebenan sitzt, kann man eine E-Mail schicken. Ist die Welt wirklich vernetzt oder ist sie vielleicht verletzt?

You needn't be afraid of them. When you see them, just remember that you, too, like all other human beings, were once a monster in one of your previous lives. Neither hate them nor do battle with them, just continue on your way.

Sometimes other people's skulls look transparent. At such moments I fall in love.

Paperback novelettes with faded covers still bore coffee stains and greasy fingerprints from their first readers. The books can never forget their readers, though the readers have no doubt forgotten all about the books' contents.

Eye contact: how souls catch fire.

I believe that love and laughter can only happen when one person takes the time to think about what would cause the other person to feel good.

If love is the treasure, laughter is the key.

Life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves, when we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves.

Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead -- when I exist in no one's memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead.

I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion. Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.

I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.

You want my ass." "Your heart first," he said, and he sounded dead serious.

The people who related to God best--Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah--treated him with startling familiarity. They talked to God as if he were sitting in a chair beside them, as one might talk to a counselor, a boss, a parent, or a lover. They treated him like a person.

Some who attempt prayer never have the sense of anyone listening on the other end. They blame themselves for doing it wrong.... Prayer requires the faith to believe that God listens.

My father used to sing to me in my mother's womb. I think I can name about any tune in two beats.

Women and men should not marry, for love is like the seasons—it comes and goes.