close relationships Quotes

“And if you’ve ever wondered what happens when a person close to you is taken too soon - and it’s always too soon - you may find other truths here, truths that may break the grip of sadness in your life, that may set you free from guilt, that may even bring you back to this world from wherever you are hiding. And then you will never feel alone.”

“LEONTES My brother, Are you so fond of your young prince as we Do seem to be of ours? POLIXENES If at home, sir, He’s all my exercise, my mirth, my matter,”

“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”

“This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.”

“I am encouraging you to be courageous, look hard, and identify your usual response. It’s the one that pops out before you have taken a breath. This is the response that can trap you in a vicious cycle of disconnection with the person you love best.”

“To shape love, we have to be open and responsive, emotionally as well as physically.”

“Almost all of us have at least one additional exquisite sensitivity - a raw spot in our emotional skin - that is tender to touch, easily rubbed, and deeply painful. When this raw spot gets abraded, it can bleed all over our relationship. We lose our emotional balance.”

“As lovers, we poise together delicately on a tightrope. When the winds of doubt and fear begin blowing, if we panic and clutch at each other or abruptly turn away and head for cover, the rope sways more and more and our balance becomes even more precarious. To stay on the rope, we must shift with each other’s moves, respond to each other’s emotions. As we connect, we balance each other. We are in emotional equilibrium.”

“We have to reconnect, to speak our needs in a way that moves our partner to respond. This longing for emotional connection with those nearest to us is the emotional priority, overshadowing even the drive for food or sex.”

“Recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection. Adult attachments may be more reciprocal and less centered on physical contact, but the nature of the emotional bond is the same.”

“Most of the blaming (...) is a desperate attachment cry, a protest against disconnection. It can only be quieted by a lover moving emotionally close to hold and reassure. Nothing else will do.”

“We are all vulnerable in love. We are more emotionally naked with those we love and sometimes, inevitably, we hurt each other with careless words or actions.”

“You two had something that had to be kept on ice, yes, incorruptible, yes!”

″ ‘Come on, Blackburn. I’m not as dumb as I look.’ He took another sip of his drink and focused back in on Nikki and Trace. ‘One minute I’m getting you a drink at Spring Fling and the next you’re on the dance-floor with Trace. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out why you both disappeared.’ ”

“And when we were alone, I…I asked him to kiss—” “Stop. Stop.” His hands came out in front of him. “I’ve heard enough.”

“However, she needed a friend, any friend to whom she could feel close. At least she thought that was what she needed.”

“We were all enclosed by the same fence, bumping into one another, fighting, celebrating. Showing one another our best and worst, revealing ourselves . . . as if that fence had created a circle of trust. A brotherhood.”

“My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.”

“I think Rowdy might be the most important person in my life. Maybe more important than my family. Can your best friend be more important than your family?”

“You can be in love and you can be in a relationship. But they’re not always the same thing.”

“Many people in your immediate circle may be watching you live your life in ways that are far beneath your potential and character. Ask those people in your immediate circle what they’ve noticed and witnessed in your life.”

“And the closer she was, the further apart she wanted to be. She just could not get it together, until she met him. Hate is heavy.”

“Is he friendly?” Tom says quietly. “I’ve discovered,” Jules says, “that a dog will become fast friends with the people who feed him.”

“The idea of living there, of not having to go back ever again to asphalt and shopping malls and modular furniture; of living there with Charles and Camilla and Henry and Francis and maybe even Bunny; of no one marrying or going home or getting a job in a town a thousand miles away or doing any of the traitorous things friends do after college; of everything remaining exactly as it was, that instant – the idea was so truly heavenly that I’m not sure I thought, even then, it could ever really happen, but I like to believe I did.”

“His quiet presence since leaving home had helped and reassured me. And more and more I’d found a liked being near him.”

“Some people standby you in your darkest hour while others walk away; only a select few march towards you and become even closer friends.”

“The vast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God’s vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships.”

“I never lie,” I said offhand. “At least not to those I don’t love.”

“I yearn to know the people I love deeply and intimately—without context, without boxes—and I yearn for them to know me that way, too.”