c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
One of the most astounding dynamics in human relationships is how the unconscious intuition of our brain's right hemisphere is able to act as radar to find us just the right person to provoke and recreate our childhood attachment relationship ...I've given much thought to the question of why we are designed to be drawn -like a moth to a flame- to the very person who is most likely to resurrect all our childhood anguish. It seems like a cruel hoax to play on two wounded souls.
— Charlette Mikulka, Peace in the Heart and Home: A Down-to-Earth Guide to Creating a Better Life for You and Your Loved Ones
If a boy doesn't respect his mother...run!
— Tracy Yates, Suzy Freaking Q: The Defintive Renegade High School Handbook on What to Say and What to Do about Guys, Friends, Parents and More.
I read once that sorrow looks back, worry looks around, and faith looks ahead.
— Sandra Steffen, Come Summer
Adversity is a mirage. People, situations, and relationships sometimes change for the worst but inevitably clear a path for far better replacements. The continued journey will always find bliss.
— Carl Henegan
In a culture of diversity, one group is likely not "just like everyone else." To deny that we have different needs, concerns, thought processes, worldview, is to refuse to look at the reason we are supposedly an identifiable community.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
When you think of it, people may rub elbows and still have an ocean or two between them.
— B.M. Bower, The Range Dwellers
Whether our caretaker was our mom, dad, uncle, aunt, grandparent, foster parent, or sibling, our blueprint of what a relationship is supposed to look like is drafted by what we observed from our caretaker’s relationship. If our caretaker took their significant other back multiple times, made excuses for their actions, helped them battle demons, turned a blind eye to their infidelity, or moved from one relationship to the next, that is what we know. Their behavior becomes our very own model of what a relationship is supposed to look like and determines what we will expect from our own partners.﻿
— Kristen Crockett, The Gift of Past Relationships
We've come a long way from the time when the crowning achievement in a woman's life was her youthful marriage. And many would agree that this represents progress for women. But when did the search for someone to marry become self-absorbed and pathetic? This absence of social sympathy for women's ambitions to marry is all the more striking because the social world has cared so deeply about virtually every other aspect of these privileged young women's inner and outer lives. (...) The achievement of a good marriage is the one area of life where the most privileged, accomplished, and high achieving young women in society face a loss of support and sympathy for their ambitions and where the social expectations are for disappointment and failure, not success.
— Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Why There Are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman
I know how bad you boys feel, but the sun will still come up tomorrow. And when it does, you 'll feel better. When the sun comes up the day after tomorrow, a little better still. This is just a part of your life, and it's over. It would have been better to win, but either way, it's over. Life will go on.
— Stephen King
males conspicuously leaving their mark to let others know where they weren't welcome.
— Jodi Picoult, Picture Perfect
Could it possibly be that he yearned for some of the same things she yearned for? Love. Someone to call your own. Someone to share the joys and the sorrows of life.
— Dorothy Garlock, Sins of Summer
When it comes to relationships, I find it best to have two feet out the door
— Josh Stern
Relationships should be like glass .... No matter who sees from what angel .... It should be transparent
— Adil Adam Memon
We men are fascinated by the things we don't really understand. It gives us something to think and talk about: like females, they drive us nuts.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
I think it's the same with all the relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn't care if the other is alive or dead, then it's just no good.-- from Quantum of Solace
— Ian Fleming, For Your Eyes Only
LADY BRACKNELLTo speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
schools for love do not exist. everyone assumes that we will know how to love instinctively.despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary school for love.those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships. however this love often eludes us.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright or made them suffer, consigning them to being inferior, ingenuous.
— Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die
Conflict can and should be handled constructively; when it is, relationships benefit. Conflict avoidance is *not* the hallmark of a good relationship. On the contrary, it is a symptom of serious problems and of poor communication.
— Harriet B. Braiker, Who's Pulling Your Strings? How to Break the Cycle of Manipulation and Regain Control of Your Life
Tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not of two isolated selves but a union
— Rollo May
And you? Now that I have discovered you? Beautiful, dangerous, unleashed. Still I try to hold you, knowing that your body is faced with knives.
— Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries
A rewarding relationship occurs when there is a common spiritual goal, shared spiritual values and a mutual desire to build a relationship upon a spiritual foundation and for the purpose of connecting to the light of the creator.
— Yehuda Berg, The Kabbalah Book of Sex: And Other Mysteries of the Universe
Definition of a relationship - an enduring, mutually-agreed upon connection or union, which fulfills certain needs of the individuals involved and the society in which they live.
— Leo Buscaglia, Loving Each Other
If I loved someone, I could never let him go away from me. I would be too miserable and lonely.
— Valerie Tripp
Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at his highest elevation, the poet needs no human intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
Life, weddings, relationships, road trips, gardening, making out, haircuts: few of the fun things in life always go as expected.
— Ariel Meadow Stallings, Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides
Once," Fran says, settling against the worktable, folding her arms, "I knew this kid who very bravely and bossily came out of the closet when she was only fourteen years old. She told me then that we can't choose who we love. We just love the people we love, no mattter what anyone else might want for us. Wasn't that you?
— Madeleine George, The Difference Between You and Me
I wouldn't have cared if my girlfriend was a Jaguar-driving Cyclops with a beard - I'd have been grateful just to have someone to make out with.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
Was Deirdre right about me purposely wanting relationships that were impossible?
— Richelle Mead, Shadow Kiss
Polyamorous people are wary of having others' values inflicted upon themselves, and so tend to stay very far away from making such pronouncements, to the point that they will actively ignore predatory behavior that is affecting their own "community.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
Okay, then, what was he like? Just give me something to go on so that I have a shot at him!''A shot at him? Are you on an elk hunt?
— Sara Zarr, Sweethearts
In our relationship, we have very well-defined roles: I am the Vice President of Logistics; he's the CEO of Emotional Support.
— Ariel Meadow Stallings, Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides
I slid down in the seat and began to weep. I wept for her, for me, but mostly because the siren call of my first big story with a yellow border around it was more powerful than the call of fatherhood.
— Joe McNally, The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets from One of the World's Top Shooters
Cáel sighed. “Look, right now? Either you want Rose, or you don’t. If you do—and, quite frankly, it’s obvious to me that you do—then give the woman a break and give yourself some credit for not being a whack job. Women are strange creatures, Gray, and she isn’t a mind reader. Who the hell knows what kind of conclusions she’s drawn over your behavior? Shit or get off the pot.” your advice on love? ‘Shit or get off the pot’?
— Riley Shane, Blood Rose
Hope is putting Faith "on the line" and expecting results!(from Mission Possible - Spiritual Covering)
— Deborah L. McCarragher, Mission Possible Spiritual Covering
When I meet a woman whose energy falters at the first barrier,she seems to fade beside my mother.
— Andrew Sean Greer
They're horrible little creatures. All snot and smelly feet and pestering questions.""Then why did you go into teaching?""It was either that or sit at home with Mother all day. I picked the lesser of two evils.
— Brian Francis, Natural Order
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.
— William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people there wouldn't be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people.
— Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men
The trouble is, I can't find a part of myself where you're not important. I write in order to be worth your while and to finance the way I want to live with you. Not the way you want to live. The way I want to live with you. Without you I wouldn't care. I'd eat tinned spaghetti and put on yesterday's clothes. But as it is I change my socks, and make money, and tart up Brodie's unspeakable drivel into speakable drivel so he can be an author too, like me.
— Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing
Many aspects of our screen-bound lives are bad for our social skills simply because we get accustomed to controlling the information that comes in, managing our relationships electronically, deleting stuff that doesn't interest us. We edit the world; we select from menus; we pick and choose; our social 'group' focuses on us and disintegrates without us. This makes it rather confusing for us when we step outdoors and discover that other people's behaviour can't be deleted with a simple one-stroke command or dragged to the trash icon.
— Lynne Truss, Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door
...I try to incorporate life's lessons from everyone around me and pay it forward anytime I can. I look at every person I meet as a new and thrilling experience with which I'm gifted. Every new city or country or continent that I visit is a beautiful exploration from which I can learn. Every new client or project represents the possibility of meeting new people and having new adventures.
— Andrea Michaels
In the world I lived in, the world of human people, there were ties and debts and consequences and good deeds. That was what bound people to society; maybe that was what constituted society. And I tried to live in my little niche in it the best way I could.
— Charlaine Harris, Dead as a Doornail
While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of "being," my work as a therapist has shown me that the demands of intimate life can be just as useful as meditation in moving people toward this capacity. Just as in formal meditation, intimate relationships teach us that the more we relate to each other as objects, the greater our disappointment. The trick, as in meditation, is to use this disappointment to change the way we relate.
— Mark Epstein, Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life - Insights from Buddhism and Psychotherapy
Suddenly the thought that the end of her life was imminent shocked him; it was one thing to pity someone he didn't know, quite another to face the same dilemma with someone he knew intimately. That was the trouble with beds. They turned strangers into intimates more quickly than ten years of polite teas in parlours.
— Colleen McCullough, The Ladies of Missalonghi
I am sorry the only outlet for her troubled mind was in clumsy foreplay with an inadequate partner."He threw the rest of her sandwich at the swinging door as she passed through it.
— Jenny Trout, Ashes to Ashes
More than anything I wish he were here with me. "A relationship is an accumulation of shared history," he'd said to me once. And here I was making history without him. It's lonely. And I can't wait to go home. Parts of me are showing through my Aqua, and I'm having a hard time keeping them separate.
— Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days
There was no singles problem until singles got so single-minded that they stopped wasting time with anyone ineligible. Before that, it was understood that one of society's main tasks was matchmaking. People with lifelong friendships and ties to local nonprofessional organizations did not have to fear that isolation would accompany retirement, old age, or losing a spouse. Overburdened householders could count on the assistance not only of their own extended families, but of the American tradition of neighborliness.
— Judith Martin, Common Courtesy: In Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem That Baffled Mr. Jefferson
We have to live like people in a web of knives, we mustn't reach out our hands or we get them gashed.
— Robinson Jeffers, The Selected Poetry
Maybe he was old-fashioned, but to him a couple meant a strong bond, with positive and negative charges constantly arcing between them.
— Stewart O'Nan, Songs for the Missing
I had an absurd desire to go down to her and make sure she was all right, and stay with her until dawn. I also had a fierce wish to bludgeon the two frat boys to death with a shovel.
— Molly Ringle, Relatively Honest
She wrote a long letter on a short piece of paper
— travel schedule
Can I have a glass of water?" Her voice was hoarse, probably from screaming. She'd always sounded like that after they'd-He didn't just force the thought aside. He clubbed it unconscious, threw it into a crawl space and walled it up alive.
— Jenny Trout, Ashes to Ashes
Naturally, I do blame Françoise. I blame her for having N in the first place. She was young, she was beautiful, she was married to a doctor, and she was intelligent. She could have abstained from producing her first son. It was wrong on a variety of levels.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Even now, he is every blue blazer getting into cab, every runner along the river,every motorcycle coming and going.
— Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
I have produced no children of my own and my husband is dead," she replied, an acid tone in her voice. "Thus I am more to be pitied than revered. I am expected to give up the shop to my nephew, who will then be able to afford to bring a very good wife from Pakistan. In exchange, I will be given houseroom and no doubt, the honor of taking care of several small children of other family members."The Major was silent. He was at once appalled and also reluctant to hear any more. This was why people usually talked about the weather.
— Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
In the long history of male and female relations all the way back to the Garden, I can't think of one in which a woman's anger ever won over a man.
— Marie Arana, Lima Nights
I write with the entire alphabet, not just the popular letters.Readers don't want to lose themselves in the text. They want to find themselves in it.
— Mark R. Trost, Post Marked
Although I notice there is never a truly good time to have a nice long chat with one´s mother-in-law, unless you are having an extraordinary life and marriage and your mother-in-law is, say, Maureen Dowd, or Indira Gandhi. Someone of that ilk.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
All men are born firstly with the instinct to protect themselves. But few grow to really love themselves, and even fewer learn to love their neighbor as themselves.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
I am not looking for a "perfect" man. Only one who matches me on an emotional, spiritual, sexual, and intellectual level.
— Amanda Mosher, Better to be able to love than to be loveable
There are moments in relationship when you didn't speak, you didn't have to; but you talked a lot.
— Aman Jassal, Rainbow - the shades of love
My Miracle, living through a Traumatic brain Injury
— Rodney Barnes
Doing something later is not automatically the same as doing something better
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
It's hard to experience desire when you're weighted down by concern.
— Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic
I had begun to feel that life was a repetition of the same thing; that there was nothing new either in me or in him; and that, on the contrary, we kept going back as it were on what was old.
— Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
It's the in-between, the sustenance, not just the gears and bolts that make a human. When you forget to find out how the person was built—the oil, chemistry, and the craft—you miss all the beauty.
— Piper Payne, White Lies
It's probably not easy for a woman to understand what it's like to be a man. Imagine you're starving, and someone puts a huge buffet in front of you. There's delicious, mouth-watering food all around you, and it's really really hard not to eat it all. That's what it's like to be a man around attractive women. The urge to want to hump everything that moves is part of a man's natural programming. It's a deep-seated hunger. To suppress that hunger takes civilization and a lot of willpower.
— Oliver Markus, Why Men And Women Can't Be Friends
The idea that we can be exactly what the other desires is a powerful fantasy.
— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Tell them there are no holes for your fingers in the masks ofmen. Tell them how could you ever even hope to love what you can'tgrab onto.
— David Foster Wallace, Girl with Curious Hair
The greater part of a men who speak ill of women are speaking of a certain woman.
— Rémy de Gourmont, Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques
I took it for granted that there must be a few men left in the world who had that kind of strength. I assumed that those men would also be looking for women with principle. I did not want to be among the marked-down goods on the bargain table, cheap because they’d been pawed over. Crowds collect there. It is only the few who will pay full price. "You get what you pay for.
— Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control
You will say good-bye for all the right reasons. You're tired of living in wait for his apocalypse. You have your own fight on your hands, and though it's no bigger or more noble than his, it will require all of your energy.It's you who has to hold on to earth. You have to tighten your grip -- which means letting go of him.
— Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
I'm tired of being inside my head. I want to live out here, with you.
— Colleen McCarty, Mounting the Whale
It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate, you could say.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Palimpsest
... relationships required such vigilance, such attention. You had to hold them together by force of will, and other people took up so much space, demanded so much time. It was exhausting.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Palimpsest
I'm always looking for what will make me whole. What will make me happy? Somewhere along the way I started to think it wasn't Helen anymore. She hasn't changed. Her laugh is still the one I remember. Her finger is still the one I put the ring on all those years ago. I can't understand why I don't want to curve next to her, keep her back warm anymore. Surely you don't lose love like keys?
— Cath Crowley, The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain
People change us. It is a rare, if not an impossible occurrence, that we come out of relationships unscathed. In our dealings with people we take something with us and we leave something behind. Some people are haunted more than others, either by the sweet perfume of another or the stink of regret.
— Donna Lynn Hope
I hope you read this, whoever you are, and imagine that there is a hypothetical person out there who needs your love, has been waiting silently, patiently for it all his life, is flawed and downright ugly at times and yet would have just eaten up any tiny bit of affection you had been willing to give, had you ever stopped your own happy life to notice. And then imagine that this hypothetical person is real, because he probably is.... Wish I’d met you. Wish I wasn’t your hypothetical. But you’re reading this, which means a few minutes ago, I went into that bathroom and pulled the trigger. You probably heard it. Sorry. You’re welcome. Thank you. And please. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please.
— Charles Yu, Sorry Please Thank You: Stories
Build me up and I with you. For we are more one than two.
— Deborah Day
Time grants a unique perspective which allows us to see events through a filter of accumulated wisdom.
— Christopher Earle
Men, being accustomed to act on reflection themselves, are a great deal too apt to believe that women act on reflection, too. Women do nothing of the sort. They act on impulse; and, in nine cases out of ten, they are heartily sorry for it afterward.
— Wilkie Collins, No Name
For the life of me I cannot remember, what made us think that we were wise and we'd never compromise. For the life of me I cannot believe we'd ever die for these sins, we were merely freshmen.
— The Verve Pipe
I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her. I didn't want to fight her anymore. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go home. So I blew up her planet.
— Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
I never told her the other story, in which she stars, in which she is always the heroine – a romanticized story full of cliché images in which I am telling her all the things there has not been enough time for, in which we are doing all the things there has not been time for…
— Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
They shared a laugh, and then the silence that so often intruded on their discussion asserted itself once again, a gap born of equal parts weariness, familiarity and--conversely--the many differences that fate had created between those who had once gone about lives that were but variations on a single melody.
— Christopher Paolini, Brisingr
I had a dream about you. At first you were a mannequin, and I was a fashion designer. Then, inexplicably, we switched roles and I became the mannequin. But instead of putting clothes on me, you laughed at my nakedness, and you sold me to the owner of a sex shop.  
— Dark Jar Tin Zoo, I Had a Dream About You
because in the past words have only driven them apart.
— Jodi Picoult, Picture Perfect
The Auden/Kallman relationship had this to be said for it: It affirmed that it's better to be blatant than latent.
— Christopher Hitchens
I had a dream about you. You were you, but you were many—a multitude of mannequins, each named Manny. And I was me, but I was Dark Jar Tin Zoo, and as such I made love to you—all of you. Then I woke up alone, naked, cuddling a mannequin I named after you who smells like you, because I spray it with the same fragrance you used to wear. Is that crazy? No, I didn’t think so either.  
— Dora J. Arod, I Had a Dream About You
i want to say to her: i just want to be myself. and i want to be with someone who's just himself. that's all. i want to see through all the performance and all the pretending and get right to the truth.
— David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
I think this is why Ellis took so many moving pictures of us. Because he knew that people come in and out of your life, and a picture fixes them in the moment they reach out to you.
— Zu Vincent, The Lucky Place
There was once a spirited feral mustang broken in by her stern rider. It was a harmonious relationship for the most part but, like any relationship, she tested the boundaries he placed on her and threw him...Would the rider, having suffered his own wound, retaliate, discipline or forgive?
— Donna Lynn Hope
I had a dream about you. We were in a canoe, and we were paddling across the desert. You said you were thirsty, and I pointed to the sand that surrounded us and said, “No, I will not urinate in your mouth.” At that point I woke up, because I realized I really had to pee—and get a drink of water. 
— Dora J. Arod, I Had a Dream About You
I had a dream about you. You had no skin or muscle on your face, and to try to conceal your bare skull you liberally applied lipstick and makeup. Your birthday was coming up, and I knew you were probably sensitive about parties that emphasize the aging process, so I decided to box up your gift in a coffin and wrap it with black wrapping paper. I got you the best gift ever too—a hooker, who happened to be dead, because that enabled me to procure a sizeable discount. 
— Dora J. Arod, I Had a Dream About You
You can have a pet zebra and put that zebra into a small cage every day and tell the zebra that you love it, but no matter how you and the zebra love each other, the fact remains, that the zebra should be let out of that cage and should belong to someone who can treat it better, the way it should be treated, someone who can make it happy.
— C. JoyBell C.
When jealousy rears up, it indicates that something inside of you is afraid. It's an alarm, nothing less and nothing more. Treat it as such.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
So, a little advice. Relax. You're not filling a job position. You're looking for a pleasant acquaintance.. who might become a good friend... who turns out to be attractive to your senses... and a rewarding lover... then a committed partner whose heart will not stray. If you don't see those signposts and in that order, then you're probably on the wrong road and getting more lost with every step.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
When you begin with the premise "I treat everyone equally," you have already blinkered yourself from seeing where you don't, or can't, or shouldn't. There is no way to treat two people equally, because they are each unique, with respective strengths and weaknesses.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
The only humility that is really ours is not that which we try to show before God in prayer, but that which we carry with us, and carry out, in our ordinary conduct; the insignficances of daily life are the importances and the tests of eternity, because they prove what really is the spirit that possesses us.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
It's a false premise to say that most monogamous people have chosen monogamy. Most people belong to the religion they were raised in...because that's what's familiar. That's the milieu they grew up in, and, for better or worse, they're just continuing the pattern. Until this traditionalist mindset is shaken loose, you would likely try from reflex to impose notions onto nonmonogamy that are not only untenable in the new context but spel sudden and messy doom even in situations that otherwise could be worked out.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
Let them see that you trust them & let them solve their own problems, make their own decisions.Do that & they will commit their lives to you. Bully the, control them out of fear or malice or just for your own convenience, & after a while you'll have to spend all your time thinking for them, controlling them, & stifling their resentment.
— Octavia E. Butler, Fledgling
I will be on the look out for you, my dear girl," he wrote. "You must expect to give yourself up when you come." For this buttoned-up age, for Burnham, it was a letter that could have steamed itself open.
— Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
I would see him, Edward.'It was no request; he knew it to be an ultimatum. He shook his head violently, not trusting his voice. Time passed. She was staring at him, saying nothing, and on her face was a look of stunned disbelief, of anguished accusation he knew would haunt him for the rest of his life. But when she spoke, her voice held no hint of tears. It was not a voice to offer either understanding or absolution, spoke of no quarter given, of a lifetime of love denied.'God may forgive you for this,' she said, very slowly and distinctly, 'but I never shall.
— Sharon Kay Penman, The Sunne in Splendour
At first, you fall in love. You wake in the morning woozy and your twilight is lit with astral violet light. You spelunk down into each other until you come to possess some inner vision of each other that becomes one thing. Us. Together. And time passes. Like the forming of Earth itself, volcanoes rise and spew lava. Oceans appear. Rock plates shift. Sea turtles swim half the ocean to lay eggs on the mother island; songbirds migrate over continents for berries from a tree. You evolve--cosmically and geologically. You lose each other and find each other again. Every day. Until love gathers the turtles and the birds of your world and encompasses them, too.
— Michael Paterniti, Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain
Relationships tend to be flawed because they are made up of inherently flawed components, mere human beings.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
Use every opportunity of humbling yourself before your fellow-men as a help to abide humble before God.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
I knew I was waiting for someone I didn't understand.
— Megan Mayhew Bergman, Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories
In a sane world, a term like "chronic crisis" would be instantly seen by anone as an oxymoron. Nevertheless, that's the state that many of us Western Worlders live in, provoking crisis after crisis so that we can justify our dis-ease rather than addressing that directly.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
Joe Spork opens the door. The man departs. Joe turns to Polly to say something about how they’re obviously not going to Portsmouth, and finds an oyster knife balanced on his cheek, just under his eye.“Can we be very clear,” Polly Cradle murmurs, “that I am not your booby sidekick or your Bond girl? That I am an independent supervillain in my own right?”Joe swallows. “Yes, we can,” he says carefully.“There will therefore be no more ‘Say hello, Polly’?”“There will not.
— Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker
I could tell you of occasionally, every eon, meeting a person, with whom I might stay for a billion years. But what of it? After a billion years there is nothing left to say, and you wander apart, uncaring in the end.
— Steven L. Peck, A Short Stay in Hell
Learning the difference between God's intervention, the devil's mischief, and PMS can lead to increased happiness.
— J.P. Galuska
But we'd only had so many nights together, and the notebook had so many pages, and the world was never going to get bigger.
— Jennifer R.  Hubbard, The Secret Year
I long ago developed a very practical smile, which I call my "Noh smile" because it resembles a Noh mask whose features are frozen. Its advantage is that men can interpret it however they want; you can imagine how often I've relied on it.
— Arthur Golden
...we are taught to put fun and serious pursuits on a continuum as opposed extremes, when this dichotomy is entirely false, made even worse when we act as though we can instantly exchange one for the other...Exerting yourself at a task that is serious and rewarding can still be quite fun, but doing something fun because you have a neurotic need to pack your life full of un is pretty much a guarantee that any long-term benefits you derive will be entirely happenstance.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
But I want to see Clara, Charlie's friend, who's right up my street. I want to see her because I don't know where my street is; I don't even know which part of town it's in, which city, which country, so maybe she'll enable me to get my bearings.
— Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
And then I met the most wonderful boy in the world. We would take long walks by the river. We spent hours gazing into each others eyes. We were so very much in love. And then one day, he went away. And I thought I'd die, but I didn't. And when I didn't, I said to myself... is that all there is to love?
— The Nines
But nearly every woman I know has a roughly similar story - in fact, dozens of them: stories about being obsessed with a celebrity, work colleague or someone they vaguely knew for years; living in a parallel world in their head; conjuring up endless plots and scenarios for this thing that never actually happened.
— Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman
To the immature, other people are not real.
— Harry Overstreet
She serves me a piece of it a few minutesout of the oven. A little steam risesfrom the slits on top. Sugar and spice -cinnamon - burned into the crust.But she's wearing these dark glassesin the kitchen at ten o'clockin the morning - everything nice -as she watches me break offa piece, bring it to my mouth,and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen,in winter. I fork the pie inand tell myself to stay out of it.She says she loves him. No waycould it be worse.
— Raymond Carver
We are raised to believe (on the surface, at least) that us humans only have so much love to give, and that it comes in a standard round unit: one. After all, we associate love with the heart, and, well, you've either got a whole heart, or you're dead, period. You can't, common wisdom goes, just run around dividing that one heart up freely; to claim to do so means that you're either a fool, or you're dividing up something that is dead.
— Anthony Ravenscroft
It suddenly struck me that Dawsey is a lonesome person. I think it may be that he has always been lonely, but he didn't mind before, and now he minds.
— Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Dear 2600: I think my girlfriend has been cheating on me and I wanted to know if I could get her password to Hotmail and AOL. I am so desperate to find out. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. And this is yet another popular category of letter we get. You say any help would be appreciated? Let’s find out if thats true. Do you think someone who is cheating on you might also be capable of having a mailbox you don’t know about? Do you think that even if you could get into the mailbox she uses that she would be discussing her deception there, especially if we live in a world where Hotmail and AOL passwords are so easily obtained? Finally, would you feel better if you invaded her privacy and found out that she was being totally honest with you? Whatever problems are going on in this relationship are not going to be solved with subterfuge. If you can’t communicate openly, there’s not much there to salvage.
— Emmanuel Goldstein, Dear Hacker: Letters to the Editor of 2600
Polyamory is differentiable from some other forms of nonmonogamy (including adultery) in that it is future-oriented. Poly relationships are not located solely in the moment, but have intentions (though perhaps tacit and vaguely defined) of at least adding to a base of experience possibly so far as signifying a life-long and emotionally attached commitment.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
Beside her, she can feel each breath he draws. How is it possible to be so close to a person and still not know what you are to each other? With baseball, it's simple. There's no mystery to what happens on the field because everything has a label -- full count, earned run, perfect game -- and there's a certain amount of comfort in this terminology. There's no room for confusion and Ryan wishes now that everything could be so straightforward. But then Nick pulls her closer, and she rests her head on his chest, and nothing seems more important that this right here.
— Jennifer E. Smith, The Comeback Season
She had searched for just the right guy; sensitive and gentle and willing to wait. Quite a long search, of course. She was looking for some imaginary man who cared more about having someone to talk to and see movies with than he needed to have sex, because she was just Not Ready for That. Did I say imaginary? Well yes. Human men are not like that.
— Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter
The red firelight glowed on their two bonny heads and revealed their faces, animated with the eager interest of children; for, though he was twenty-three and she eighteen, each had so much of novelty to feel, and learn, that neither experienced nor evinced the sentiments of sober disenchanted maturity.
— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Mom actually said that?" Cassie's face shown with happiness. "She always hated my math!""Nah," Martin said. "She was just being that way for you. She thought it was what you needed to hear. If parents told us what they really think about stuff, we could figure them out like regular people.
— Clare B. Dunkle, The Sky Inside
All I can think is that I want her more than anything. I want her more than I've ever wanted anything, ever.
— Angela Johnson, The First Part Last
....though modern Marriage is a tremendous laboratory, its members are often utterly without preparation for the partnership function. How much agony and remorse and failure could have been avoided if there had been at least some rudimentary learning before they entered the partnership....And that statement is equally valid for all relationships.
— Leo Buscaglia, Loving Each Other
When I opened my case in the hotel, he gestured excitedly at my snakeskin sandals, turquoise suede wedges and silver-speckled jellies. “But you’ve loads of shoes,” he bellowed joyfully. I shook my head sadly. Men just don’t get it, do they? They’re definitely missing the shoe chromosome.
— Marian Keyes, Under the Duvet: Shoes, Reviews, Having the Blues, Builders, Babies, Families and Other Calamities
...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.
— Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Marriage is just an elaborate game that allows two selfish people to periodically feel that they're not.
— Paul Reiser, Couplehood
I wondered straightaway how he could sit at peace there, of an evening, with the row of heads staring down at him. There were no pictures, no flowers: only the heads of chamois. The concession to melody was the radiogram and the stack of records of classical music.Foolishly, I had asked, "Why only chamois?"He answered at once, "They fear Man."This might have led to an argument about animals in general, domestic, wild, and those which adapt themselves to the whims and vagaries of the human race; but instead he changed the subject abruptly, put on a Sibelius record, and presently made love to me, intently but without emotion. I was surprised but pleased. I thought, "We are suited to one another. There will be no demands. Each of us will be self-contained and not beholden to the other."All this came true, but something was amiss. There was a flaw - not only the nonappearance of children, but a division of the spirit. The communion of flesh which brought us together was in reality a chasm, and I despised the bridge we made. Perhaps he did as well. I had been endeavouring for ten years to build for my self a ledge of safety. ("The Chamois")
— Daphne du Maurier, Echoes from the Macabre: Selected Stories
Pa never told stories like Grandpa. Or treated the barn like family. Eli knew how Grandpa’s own pa had built the barn by hand, hauling bluestone for the foundation behind a stubborn ox with horns as wide as a tractor. How the smell of the plank walls was like family and how you never washed your chore coat so the animals would smell that you were family, too.
— Sandra Neil Wallace
That's where your definition of attachment comes in. I'm in a monogamous relationship with two people.
— Robert Downs, Falling Immortality
Marriage is more about snore strips and flannel nightgowns than candlelight dinners.
— Barbara Bartlein, Why Did I Marry You Anyway?: Overcoming the Myths That Hinder a Happy Marriage
In an era of mass media, it is easy to believe that the more eyeballs, the more impact. But radio, television, and tracts accounted for a combined total of less than one-half of 1% of the Busters who are born again.
— David Kinnaman, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters
...Next thing I know you've run off to Paris and thrown yourself under the nearest Frenchman-
— Nicholls David, One Day
Christ, they’d be getting a cat next. He mentally recoiled from the idea: the day they did that, he’d cut off his dick and call himself a lesbian.
— Kate Aaron, Four Chances: A Short Story Quartet
flagrant, adj. I would be standing right there, and you would walk out of the bathroom without putting the cap back on the toothpaste.
— David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary
The self is constituted within a variety of arenas and in relation to multiple traditions. Self-hood, on this understanding, is both provisional and open-ended, and critically depends on the configuration of relationships between one’s own groups and those cultures and values that are deemed ‘other’. The regulation of alterity becomes a defining attribute of self-hood, as my sense of who I am is crucially mediated by an understanding of that which I am not (paraphrasing William Connolly).
— Michael Kenny, Politics of Identity: Liberal Political Theory and the Dilemas of Difference
I'm not an ageist, and I'm not looking for a man in a certain restrictive age range, however I've found over the years that people younger than me tend to be immature. The problem with this is that, as I get older, all the good men have already been snapped up.
— Brett Kiellerop-Morris, My Big Fat Gay Life
Beautiful building,” Phoebe said. Sam nodded. “Classical Revival,” he said. It was yet another display of his seemingly unending knowledge that both made her proud and made her feel very small. Maybe if she had gone to college she would have learned about building styles and understand what Classical Revival meant. They could have intelligent discussions about things like rooflines and columns.
— Jennifer McMahon, Don't Breathe a Word
Watching him with one eye, she wondered if men ever figured out that they were more appealing when they were pursuing their own work than when they were pursuing a woman.
— Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
This does not escape my notice, it is a context. I resent the fact of a context; my social status has shifted and no one is going to acknowldege it, that´s certain. I´m expected to be Brave and Rise Above. I dress for the role; I must look far better now that I did when I was married. I must look pulled together into a nice tight Hermès knot of self-containment. I don´t make the rules; I just do my best to follow them.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
There is that, and there is also the Irreconcilable Differences line. It seems so catchall, so vague. You could say that about anyone, any man and woman at all. Jesus and Mary Magdalene: "Irreconcilable Differences." JFK and Jackie, anyone at all. It´s built into the man-woman thing. What kind of paltry reason is that? "Insanity" is another box to be checked on the divorce petition, the only alternative to "Irreconcilable Differences." I would like to check it.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
To keep myself from harming or calling N and to stave off the rage and despair, I focus on my extraordinary son, drink midrange Chardonnay every night after he is asleep, and make a barrage of late-night mail-order retail purchases placed from the couch. The couch has officially become my second battle station. I am angry and I have credit And I´m all blackened inside; I should wear a pointy witch hat around Larkspur as I go to the bank and drop A off at day care. It would be more honest.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Clara shrugged and immediately knew her betrayal of Peter. In one easy movement she'd distanced herself from his bad behavior, even thought she herself was responsible for it. Just before everyone had arrived, she'd told Peter about her adventure with Gamache. Animated and excited she'd gabbled on about her box and the woods and the exhilarating climb up the ladder to the blind. But her wall of words hid from her a growing quietude. She failed to notice his silence, his distance, until it was too late and he'd retreated all the way to his icy island. She hated that place. From it he stood and stared, judged, and lobbed shards of sarcasm.'You and your hero solve Jane's death?''I thought you'd be pleased,' she half lied. She actually hadn't thought at all, and if she had, she probably could have predicted his reaction. But since he was comfortably on his Inuk island, she'd retreat to hers, equipped with righteous indignation and warmed by moral certitude. She threw great logs of 'I'm right, you're an unfeeling bastard' onto the fire and felt secure and comforted.
— Louise Penny, Still Life
He tries to force the anger down, but it's like an anvil on his chest. He closes his eyes, like Sammy taught him, and forces the anvil up; he softens.
— Chris Crutcher, The Crazy Horse Electric Game
Pablo's many stories and reminiscences about Olga and Marie-Thérese and Dora Maar, as well as their continuing presence just offstage in our own life together, gradually made me realize that he had a kind of Bluebeard complex that made him want to cut off the heads of all women he had collected in his private museum. But he didn't cut the heads entirely off. He preferred to have life go on and to have all those women who had shared his life at one moment or another still letting out little peeps and cries of joy or pain and making a few gestures like disjointed dolls, just to prove there was some life left in them, that it hung by a thread, and that he held the other end of the thread. From time to time they would provide a humorous or dramatic or sometimes tragic side to things, and that was all grist to his mill.
— Françoise Gilot, Life with Picasso