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0de09e6 They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered. sexual intimacy F. Scott Fitzgerald
1f85264 I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been. past love intimacy memory Raymond Carver
d3f5c8c It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;--it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others. time opportunity marianne-dashwood openness self-disclosure intimacy Jane Austen
fa23f50 We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants...I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. she walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. She knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either. People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. heroism the-fault-in-our-stars depth hero intimacy John Green
e3d948d If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine. poetry death life privacy intimacy Fernando Pessoa
e1d30cb Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights. sadness darkness music movie-theatres summer-nights freshness smell rock-and-roll girls tears summer intimacy Haruki Murakami
7a943cd Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick. violence love offense shoot kick sweet joke intimacy Raymond Carver
44bcbb2 That night we push our cots just a little closer together, and look into each other's eyes in the moments before we fall asleep. When he finally drifts off, our fingers are twisted together in the space between the beds. I smile a little, and let myself go. love intimacy Veronica Roth
7a3303a Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye of a neon culture. Real intimacy is of the soul, and the soul is reserved. inspirational-quotes love intimacy John O'Donohue
1918422 You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them. hate relationships love intimacy Hanif Kureishi
4cf1b66 His eyes are open, watching my flushed face, my ragged breathing. I try to stop myself from making embarrassing noises. It's more intimate than the way he's touching me, to be looked at like that. I hate that he knows what he's doing and I don't. I hate being vulnerable. I hate that I throw my head back, baring my throat. I hate the way I cling to him, the nails of one hand digging into his back, my thoughts splintering, and the single last thing in my head: that I like him better than I've ever liked anyone and that of all the things he's ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst. sex hate love like vulnerable intimacy pleasure Holly Black
18ec48e Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe. intimacy Elizabeth Gilbert
19734a1 I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? It is not quite true that you can't go home again. I have done it, coming back here. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places. shallowness familiarity depth home intimacy Wallace Stegner
a01db11 Dear God, teach me to be careless. hanif-kureishi intimacy Hanif Kureishi
f10d544 Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people- there are many of them- who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it? They evoke our interests and affections, and keep the life of the spirit dawdling around them. Then they withdraw. When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour- flirting- and if carried far enough, it is punishable by law. But no law- not public opinion, even- punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable. Was she one of these? friendship flirtation exhaustion intimacy E.M. Forster
07c50e0 "Simon stopped breathing until her forefinger touched his nipple, and then his hand shot up to cover hers. "I want you," he said. Her eyes flicked downward, and her lips curved ever so slightly. "I know." "No," he groaned, pulling her closer. "I want to be in your heart. I want-" His entire body shuddered when their skin touched. "I want to be in your soul." love simon intimacy Julia Quinn
8bc5d21 I know love is dark work; you have to get your hands dirty. If you hold back, nothing interesting happens. At the same time, you have to find the right distance between people. Too close, and they overwhelm you; too far and they abandon you. How to hold them in the right relation? love hanif-kureishi intimacy Hanif Kureishi
408a9a3 'And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. We gamble with it, hoping that by exposing ourselves, someone will find a way in. This is why the human animal will always be vulnerable: because it wants to be.' lexicon privacy vulnerability intimacy Max Barry
1e9e391 Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it, once more, the deceptiveness of beauty, so that all one's perceptions, half-way to truth, were tangled in a golden mesh? Or did she lock up within her some secret which certainly Lily Briscoe believed people must have for the world to go on at all? Every one could not be as helter skelter, hand to mouth as she was. But if they knew, could they tell one what they knew? Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs. Ramsay's knees, close as she could get, smiling to think that Mrs. Ramsay would never know the reason of that pressure, she imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them out, would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? Could the body achieve, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of the brain? or the heart? Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsay's knee. women love knowledge intimacy Virginia Woolf
7ff8dfc Being apart was wrong. Simply lying side by side did more for a relationship than words. A warm bed, a nest of animal intimacy. Words could be misunderstood, whereas loving companionship bred trust. relationship love intimacy Michel Faber
c49e634 There are people one knows and people one doesn't. One shouldn't cheapen the former by feigning intimacy with the latter. pretence shelby-foote intimacy Tony Horwitz
2d6813a I can only think how good life on earth can be, at times. What grief two people can give to one another! And what pleasure! relationships intimacy Hanif Kureishi
6e64343 Intimacy between people requires closeness as well as distance. It is like dancing. Sometimes we are very close, touching each other or holding each other; sometimes we move away from each other and let the space between us become an area where we can freely move. To keep the right balance between closeness and distance requires hard work, especially since the needs of the partners may be quite different at a given moment. One might desire closeness while the other wants distance. One might want to be held while the other looks for independence. A perfect balance seldom occurs, but the honest and open search for that balance can give birth to a beautiful dance, worthy to behold. solitude relationships vulnerability intimacy Henri J.M. Nouwen
5e5ea3b There is a magic to intimacy, a world built of sighs and skin that is thicker than brick, stronger than iron. There is only you, and him, so impossibly close that nothing can come between. Not the enemy, not your allies. In this safe haven, in this hallowed place and time, I could even ask the questions whose answers I feared. intimacy Jodi Picoult
6328705 My son, there may be a time when I explain these things to you, because there may be a time when I understand them. hanif-kureishi intimacy Hanif Kureishi
a34c1d6 I find it hard to describe what it is like to look fully into eyes that one has known that well--known better than one knows the look of one's own eyes, actually--and then put away, deliberately forgotten. That instantly reasserted intimacy, that resumption of what looks like friendly concern, is like nakedness, like exposure. transparency intimacy Wallace Stegner
05eb9fb Isn't it true that a pleasant house makes winter more poetic, and doesn't winter add to the poetry of a house? winter poetry intimacy Charles Baudelaire
765093f But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with. love feeling intimacy George Eliot
d444f0a Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they chose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. motherhood men feminism feminist love fear-of-love masculinity manhood intimacy bell hooks
e465286 Friendship is a creative and subversive force. It claims that intimacy is the secret law of life and universe. friendship intimacy John O'Donohue
6ceda67 I sit on the bed and kick off my shoes, and he kneels before me and takes the riding boots, holding one open for my bare foot. I hesitate; it is such an intimate gesture between a young woman and a man. His smiling upward glance tells me that he understands my hesitation but is ignoring it. I point my toe and he holds the boot, I slide my foot in and he pulls the boot over my calf. He takes the soft leather ties and fastens the boot, at my ankle, then at my calf, and then just below my knee. He looks up at me, his hand gently on my toe. I can feel the warmth of his hand through the soft leather. I imagine my toes curling in pleasure at his touch. 'Anne, will you marry me?' he asks simply, as he kneels before me. love marriage-proposal richard-iii touching intimacy Philippa Gregory
f0f4492 His agony somehow became an invisible hand, stretching out through the Force, a hand that found her, far away, alone in her apartment in the dark, a hand that felt the silken softness of her skin and the sleek coils of her hair, a hand that dissolved into a field of pure energy, of pure feeling that reached inside her-- And now he felt her, really felt her in the Force, as though she could have been some kind of Jedi, too, but more than that: he felt a bond, a connection, deeper and more intimate than he'd ever had before with anyone, even Obi-Wan; for a precious eternal instant he was her ... he was the beat of her heart and he was the motion of her lips and he was her soft words as though she spoke a prayer to the stars-- lovers anidala padmé-amidala the-force star-wars intimacy Matthew Woodring Stover
041db20 I wished I could spend the rest of my life... being slightly crushed by someone who loved me. hugs embrace intimacy Gail Carson Levine
6bdecaf "The second hugely seductive move is to signal that we view the other person with a mixture of tenderness and realism. It's often imagined that it'll be seductive to convey an air of adoration, to hint that the other strikes us as exceptionally attractive or accomplished. But surprisingly, it is deeply worrying to be obviously adored, because everyone, from the inside, knows very well that they don't deserve intense acclaim, are often disappointing and sometimes quite simply pitiful. admiration seduction intimacy Alain de Botton
1cac7a6 "Well, I've kept you waiting long enough," he said, peering at me from that distance which drinking adds between people and which, at odd turns in the evening, seems closeness itself." drunk intimacy Ray Bradbury
209ef7e "The French, it seems to me, strike a happy balance between intimacy and reserve. Some of this must be helped by the language, which lends itself to graceful expression even when dealing with fairly basic subjects.... And there's that famously elegant subtitle from a classic Western. COWBOY: "Gimme a shot of red-eye." SUBTITLE: "Un Dubonnet, s'il vous plait." No wonder French was the language of diplomacy for all those years." french-languange reserve intimacy Peter Mayle
ca9f610 I'd never recited poetry to anyone before; I've never done it since. I have a highly sensitive, built-in fuse mechanism that keeps me from opening up too far, from revealing my feelings, and reciting poetry makes me feel as though I'm talking about my feelings and standing on one leg at the same time. poetry kundera vulnerability intimacy Milan Kundera
8a5b186 Mostly, it is lies that will destroy a relationship. Deceit is a barrier to intimacy. Andre Chevalier lies relationships pretending intimacy Nikki Sex
bdedffe On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers. friendship love intimacy George Eliot
19f8a1c "The beauty of being human is the capacity and desire for intimacy. Yet we know that even those who are most intimate remain strange to us. Like children, we often "make strange" with each other." solitude relationship friendship love divine-love belonging communion intimacy longing John O'Donohue
c90d1ab Why do we view the boundaries people create for themselves as challenges? Why do we see someone setting a limit and then try to push? Once, I was at a restaurant with a large group of people and the waitress kept touching me. It was really fucking annoying because I don't want to be touched like that unless we are in a sexual relationship. Every time she passed by, she would rub my shoulders or run her hand down my arm and I kept getting more and more irritated but I said nothing. I never do. Do my boundaries exist if I don't voice them? Can people not see my body, the mass of it, as one very big boundary? Do they not know how much effort went into this? Because I am not a touchy-feely person, I always feel this light shock, this surprise, really, when my skin comes into contact with another person's skin. Sometimes that shock is pleasant, like Oh, here is my body in the world. Sometimes, it is not. I never know which it will be. personal-space hugging respect intimacy Roxane Gay
3abcb2c If you want to get close to somebody, you have to tell him or her something intimate about yourself. They'll tell you something intimate in return, and if you keep this going, maybe you'll end up in love. love-quotes love falling-in-love-quotes intimacy Douglas Coupland
cd511cd I've given myself to you. You may have my body, soul, everything. Time passes, and all I want is the intimacy that slows, defeats. and confounds it. Love, that's what it is. You've always made the mistake that men often make, and carried forward the great fault that mars civilisation, which is that you believe that your philosophy is deeper than love. love men-and-women-quote intimacy Mark Helprin
ddd4aa9 There's the imperative to keep secrets, and the imperative to have them known. How do you know that you're a person, distinct from other people? By keeping certain things to yourself. You guard them inside you, because, if you don't, there's no distinction between inside and outside. Secrets are the way you know you even have an inside. A radical exhibitionist is a person who has forfeited his identity. But identity in a vacuum is also meaningless. Sooner or later, the inside of you needs a witness. Otherwise you're just a cow, a cat, a stone, a thing in the world, trapped in your thingness. To have an identity, you have to believe that other identities equally exist. You need closeness with other people. And how is closeness built? By sharing secrets. Colleen knows what you secretly think of Willow. You know what Colleen secretly thinks of Flor. Your identity exists at the intersection of these lines of trust. identity secrets intimacy Jonathan Franzen
42e7b69 The only place Aletta and I could be together unseen was just under the rafters in the church tower, a circumstance that propelled us into an earlier intimacy than what we would have known had we been permitted to walk together Sunday afternoons under the wide sky. refuge secrecy young-love secrets intimacy Susan Vreeland
17a9d2c I looked at him over my glass of citronade. It was not easy to explain my father and usually I never talked about him. He was my secret property. Preserved for me alone, much as Manderley was preserved for my neighbour. I had no wish to introduce him casually over a table in a Monte Carlo restaurant. There was a strange air of unreality about that luncheon, and looking back upon it now it is invested for me with a curious glamour. There was I, so much of a schoolgirl still, who only the day before had sat with Mrs Van Hopper, prim, silent, and subdued, and twenty-four hours afterwards my family history was mine no longer, I shared it with a man I did not know. For some reason I felt impelled to speak, because his eyes followed me in sympathy like the Gentleman Unknown. sharing intimacy Daphne du Maurier
75519b2 He felt Herakles' hand move on his thigh and Geryon's head went back like a poppy in a breeze -- herakles mythology intimacy Anne Carson
8e38d90 "Many of the stories we take to be true or fixed about ourselves can change dramatically when we have conversations with people who make our world larger, not smaller. By doing our part to develop rather than diminish our voice, we can: - Create a more accurate and complex picture of ourselves and another person. - Speak with honor and personal integrity even when the other person behaves badly. - Strengthen our capacity for creativity, wisdom, joy, and zest. integrity strength love voice intimacy creativity Harriet Lerner Ph.D.
dfa4877 "The body is not a fortress, no matter what we may do to make it such. This may be one of life's greatest frustrations, or is it humiliations? I spend a lot of time thinking about bodies and boundaries and how people seem hell-bent on ignoring those boundaries at all costs. I am not a hugger. I never have been and I never will be. I hug my friends, and do so happily, but I am sparing with such affections. A hug means something to me; it is an act of profound intimacy, so I try not to get too promiscuous with it. Also, I find it awkward, opening myself up, allowing people to touch, to breach my fortress. When I tell strangers I am not a hugger, some take this as a challenge, like they can hug me into submission, like they can will my aversion to hugs away by the strength of their arms. Oftentimes, they will draw me into their body, saying something condescending like, "See, it isn't that bad." I think, I never thought it was, and I stand there, my arms limply by my sides, probably grimacing, but still, they don't get the message that I am not a willing participant in this embrace. The fortress hath been breached." personal-space hugging respect intimacy Roxane Gay
d5bb84d Over time, there would be less and less of him and more of the tumor. His brain was being eaten by God. He left the clinic in fine spirits. He had no intention of removing the tumor. It was the perfect solution to his dilemma: how to feed his body's desire for intimacy. He was delusional, of course. There was no higher presence filling him with love, connecting him to all things. It only felt that way. But that was fine. That was ideal. He would not have trusted a God outside his head. god lexicon tumor delusions intimacy Max Barry
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