c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I´m just not sending out the right vibe lately. Perhaps the fact that I wear stained sweatpants and free T-shirts is holding me back. I just can´t seem to get back into the intelligent-slut-for-hire outfits that lure men even shoes with laces evade me. Plus my hair is Fran Lebowitz-esque. I think my eyes are getting closer together. I don´t know. 
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Finally he turned his head toward her face and brushed a kiss over her cheek. “I love you and I believe with all my heart that you love me as well. Why can’t you say it, Hero?
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Notorious Pleasures
Playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship's collapse. Noone can be any one thing all the time.
— Portia de Rossi, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain
Without such trust and safety, social relationships tend to become strategic rather than cooperative, increasingly full of skepticism and even anxiety and fear about others' intentions. (p. 27)
— Donald Rothberg, The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World
The teaching of the sexual tantras all come down to one point. Although desire, of whatever shape or form, seeks completion, there is another kind of union than the one we imagine. In this union, achieved when the egocentric model of dualistic thinking is no longer dominant, we are not united with it, nor am I united with you, but we all just are. The movement from object to subject, as described in both Eastern meditation and modern psychotherapy, is training for this union, but its perception usually comes as a surprise, even when this shift is well under way. It is a kind of grace. The emphasis on sexual relations in the tantric teachings make it clear that the ecstatic surprise of orgasm is the best approximation of this grace.
— Mark Epstein, Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life - Insights from Buddhism and Psychotherapy
I could hardly get a boy to look at me. All right, they'd look, they'd even take me out, but no one asked for a second date. I was too nasty, a real wise guy, and all the boys could tell what my rotten disposition was. Deep down, I wanted a commitment with a capital C. To get anywhere with me, a boy would have to sign his undying loyalty with his own blood.
— Alice Hoffman, Local Girls
Darling, whose book is this to be?""Ostensibly yours, my sweet""I see -- rather like my life since I met you?""Yes darling
— John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes
Sand castles just aren't made to last.
— Alice Yi-Li Yeh, Someday
There's a cover for every pot, but I've never seen so many mismatched pots and covers in all my life. - Ellen Wasserfeldman, from Notes from Ellen Wasserfeldman by Alisa Dana Steinberg
— Alisa Steinberg, Notes from Ellen Wasserfeldman (Preview Plus Bonus Material)
You have to shrink yourself to fit into this little life with him.
— Melissa Bank
Jack hadn’t thought of love as a promise before—a promise that, even when the world was falling down around him, would stay kept. But without Sutton saying a word, he knew that there would be comfort when he couldn’t sleep tonight. And tomorrow and the day after, there would be a home to go to, even if it was no more than a pair of arms around him and a head tucked close to his in the darkness.
— Tamara  Allen, Whistling in the Dark
To be honest, going out with Ed after Josh is like moving on to Duchy Originals super-tasty seeded loaf after plastic white bread. (I don't mean to be rude about Josh. And I didn't realize it at the time. But it is. He is. Plastic white bread.)
— Sophie Kinsella, Twenties Girl
To know other people thought he'd made a mistake vindicated me. I wasn't a bad girlfriend, he was simply going through a period of temporary insanity and he'd come to his senses soon.
— Dorothy Koomson, Marshmallows for Breakfast
When I was your age, if a boy behaved badly, one simply scored his name out from one's dance card.(Sadie Lancaster - to Lara Lington)
— Sophie Kinsella, Twenties Girl
This was one of those moments when I realized that my emotional baggage, once a few neatly packed pieces, was now like the Joads' truck, stacked high with old clothes, half a rocking chair, a mule, all barely secured with twine.
— Amy Cohen, The Late Bloomer's Revolution: A Memoir
I have never understood why a woman must have a man to take her into dinner.
— Jude Morgan, Indiscretion
The kiss intimately relates to the most primitive kind of human contact, which can satisfy all of our needs, like: feeding, enjoying pleasure, tasting, wanting, rejecting, everything we associate with love.
— Mabel Iam
Guilt is a feeble emotion. It surrenders too easily
— Deborah McKinlay, The View from Here
For better or for worse, but not for lunch,...
— Abigail Thomas, A Three Dog Life
And deep down, she felt like maybe she didn't deserve it-that she belonged with the petty thieves and guys who drank Pabst Blue Ribbon for breakfast
— Jennifer McMahon
People frequently point to communication as a problem, because its easy to notice, but usually it is a symptom of an underlying problem with a relationship posture.
— Roberta M. Gilbert, Extraordinary Relationships
We tried to act familiar, which meant we couldn't ask the kind of questions that might have helped us figure each other out and year after year the distance grew.
— Heidi Jon Schmidt, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002
Be real and be unashamed, even of your faults. I do truly know what my husband is made of and vice versa. 
— Amy Bloom
What was happening to them was that every bad time produced a bad feeling that in turn produced several more bad times and several more bad feelings, so that their life together became crowded with bad times and bad feelings, so crowded that almost nothing else could grow in that dark field. But then she had a feeling of peace one morning that lingered from the evening before spent sewing while he sat reading in the next room. And a day or two later, she had a feeling of contentment that lingered in the morning from the evening before when he kept her company in the kitchen while she washed the dinner dishes. If the good times increased, she thought, each good time might produce a good feeling that would in turn produce several more good times that would produce several more good feelings. What she meant was that the good times might multiply perhaps as rapidly as the square of the square, or perhaps more rapidly, like mice, or like mushrooms springing up overnight from the scattered spore of a parent mushroom which in turn had sprung up overnight with a crowd of others from the scattered spore of a parent, until her life with him with be so crowded with good times that the good times might crowd out the bad as the bad times had by now almost crowded out the good. 
— Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance
..begin by talking about the kind of existentialist chaos that exists in our own lives and our inability to overcome the sense of alienation and frustration we experience when we try to create bonds of intimacy and solidarity with one another. Now part of this frustration is to be understood again in relation to structures and institutions. In the way in which our culture of consumption has promoted an addiction to stimulation - one that puts a premium on packaged and commodified stimulation. The market does this to convince us that our consumption keeps oiling the economy for it to reproduce itself. But the effect of this addiction to stimulation is an undermining, a waning of our ability for qualitatively rich relationships.
— Cornel West, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life
The most empowering relationships are those in which each partner lifts the other to a higher possession of their own being.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Then I met Linda and the sun rose.I can't find a better way to express it. The sun rose in my life. At first, as dawn breaking on the horizon, almost as if to say, this is where you have to look. Then came the first rays of sunshine, everything became clearer, lighter, more alive, and I became happier and happier, and then it hung in the sky of my life and shone and shone and shone.
— Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 2
Your blessings are very important to melt down the stony hearts.
— Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
Let's hope that for every time that we get hurt or break our heart, there is something somewhere being written to make up for it, to make the happiness due even bigger and laughters even merrier, for after all good things must happen to good people.
— Mansi Soni
...It's just nice to see you out from his shadow. Because things don't grow in the shadows, you know? So it was frustrating to see you standing there...and really cool to see you step out of it. I don't know who this new guy is, but make sure when you're with him, you're not standing in his shadow. Stand where everyone can see you.
— David Levithan, Another Day
A relationship will either make the majority of your life happy or miserable. It is important to take your time and make sure that it is a wise choice before making a commitment.
— Pamela Cummins, Psychic Wisdom on Love and Relationships
The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
I asked if you was pleased.’‘Course I’m pleased! You think I’d be mad if I wasn’t pleased?’‘You don’t make a lick of sense,’ he says, but he is smiling now and he takes a step closer to me.
— Erin Lindsay McCabe, I Shall be Near to You
There was a warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.
— D.H. Lawrence, Sons and lovers. Lady Chatterley's lover
Women Empowerment Reminder of The Day. Always respect yourself as a woman. You attract what you are, so be very mindful of how you’re representing yourself. If you want respect, you must first learn how to respect yourself, first. Attracting negative attention is never a good thing. Be a woman of substance! Be a woman that both women and men respect, admire, and look up to. Don’t disrespect yourself by lowering your standards and accepting just anything that comes your way. It’s okay to be single! If you want a relationship of substance, you can’t keep entertaining people and things that mean you no good. Think about it! It’s all up to you.
— Stephanie Lahart
Eli . . .” I rasped. I lost track of where his kisses landed, where his fingers touched, and grew too comfortable in his arms. “I can’t.”“You can,” he urged, pulling back and grinding my hips against his. Heat quickly rushed to my cheeks. “I have you. I found you, and I’m not letting you go.”“You don’t—” Eli’s mouth crashed down on mine, stealing a kiss, and I freakin’ lost it. His mouth was absolutely sinful and there was nothing gentle about him, either. Eli was out for something good and was determined to get it. Euphoria sliced through my drunken haze and I grinned as I kissed him back. When his hands slid up my dress and his tongue pushed past my teeth, I moaned loudly and wrapped my legs around his waist.Just this. I can do this.Eli’s fingers inched closer to my panties and I threw my head back against the building to catch my breath.Oh, my God.Lights flashed behind my eyes and the red and blue spots showered over me like rain. “I-I have a wedding tomorrow. My friend’s,” I muttered, almost pulling away. To my ears, it didn’t even sound like a coherent sentence.“Cielo, I don’t really care.” Eli glanced up at me from his place between my flushed breasts and leaned in to suck my bottom lip into his mouth.“I’m drunk.”“Good.” His hand beneath my dress tugged and I heard the audible rip of my panties. “So am I.
— Nadège Richards, 5 Miles
A human being basically could not live alone. I had always thought of one’s soul as an imperfect creature; God had created it that way to allow the need to exist –the need to have relationships with other people in order to always run after the one obsession that had humanity seeking it on regular basis –perfection. Whether that relationship was between family members, friends, co-workers or even a romantic relationship, it was always people’s way to achieve flawlessness since they couldn’t accomplish it on their own.
— Mariam Maarouf, Rosie
He should in humility have asked her why it was that he was naturally a cuckold, why two women of different temperaments and characters had been inspired to have lovers at his expense. He should be telling her, with the warmth of her body warming his, that his second wife had confessed to greater sexual pleasure when she remembered that she was deceiving him.
— William Trevor
And if insight were sufficient, if the inner life were the whole of life, their happiness has been assured.
— E.M. Forster
Life is too short to not kick fear in the ass and allow yourself to love again.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
It had all seemed as inevitable as sunset. Instead it was the beauty of the sun glinting upon the scythe.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
That fist he was raising at me would wham into the cupboard door, hurting only himself. I saw it all happening, then it really did happen. But I didn't understand the whore thing. Why was he confusing the drinking with the other? Then I got it. Obvious. It was all mixed up for him, all the same thing: the drinking, the other, anything that could make a woman free.
— David Gates
(Her husband's departure ...) had picked Mildred up by the hair and dropped her down at the doorstep of insanity.From "Butterfly on F street
— Edward P. Jones
Every day I’m convinced that I can’t possibly love you more… and every day I’m proven wrong.
— Steve Maraboli
A while back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners.
— Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Two birds went for dating. The male bird was killed and the female bird is being murdered.
— Santosh Kalwar
And she realized everything one does is just another effort to be understood by someone a little bit more.
— Vatsal Surti, 20
The truth is, that one doesn't really know anything about anybody. Not even the people who are nearest to you...''Isn't that going a little too far--exaggerating too much?''I don't think it is. When you think of people, it is in the image you have made of them for yourself.
— Agatha Christie, A Caribbean Mystery
It's disconcerting to realize how little you have to say to someone who once occupied such a prominent place in your bed.
— Sue Grafton, J is for Judgment
Sometimes I feel like relationships consist of telling your same life stories to different people until someone finally appreciates them.
— Kate Rockland, Falling Is Like This
It seemed funny that one day I would go to bed in her arms and the next not feel anything, like a switch had gone off. But no, that wasn’t honest either. This had been building for a long time. Our silences were getting longer. Our arguments more frequent. How do you stay with someone when there are no dreams to build? No purpose to accomplish? No meaning? No meaning —that was the monster that drove us away from one another in the end. Always.
— Steven L. Peck, A Short Stay in Hell
Never hesitate to let the one you love know how you feel. Align your minds, synchronise your hearts and above be fearless when dancing with their souls.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
Evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of any relationship is your responsibility. You do not have to passively accept what is brought to you. You can choose.
— Deborah Day
Bloody men are like bloody buses —You wait for about a yearAnd as soon as one approaches your stopTwo or three others appear.You look at them flashing their indicators,Offering you a ride.You’re trying to read the destinations,You haven’t much time to decide.If you make a mistake, there is no turning back.Jump off, and you’ll stand there and gazeWhile the cars and the taxis and lorries go byAnd the minutes, the hours, the days.
— Wendy Cope, Serious Concerns
That chain of relationships made me think of how connections are made--you read a book, you meet a person, you have a single experience, and your life is changed in some way. No act, therefore, however small, should be dismissed or ignored.
— Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.
— Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups
In choosing a mate, don't pick the tallest and most handsome or the most beautiful. Don't choose one just because that person raises your physical passions. Look for the person who is good from within, the one with substance and worth.
— Helen Quist Milligan
Her violence frightened me. She always claimed that I was the jealous one, and I was often jealous, but when I saw things working against me I simply became disgusted and withdrew. Lydia was different. She reacted. She was the Head Cheerleader at the Game of Violence.
— Charles Bukowski, Women
Loving relationships, though necessary for life, health, and growth, are among the most complicated skills. Before we can be successful at achieving relationships, it is necessary that we broaden our understanding of how they work, what they mean and how what we do and believe can enhance or destroy them. We can accomplish this only if we are willing to put in the energy and take the time to study failed relationships as well as examine successful ones. Loving relationships cannot be taken lightly. Unless we are looking for pain, they must not be forever approached in a trial and error fashion. Too many of us have experienced the cost of these lackadaisical approaches in terms of tears, confusion and guilt.
— Leo Buscaglia, Loving Each Other
I had a dream about you. I was a ventriloquist trying to share your fashion secrets, but you wouldn’t talk. So we put on a strip show for the department store sale, and I was arrested for theft – I took away your dignity as a mannequin
— Bauvard, I Had a Dream About You
Strong relationships come from well-bonded friendships.
— Jonathan Anthony Burkett
A real relationship doesn't properly begin until the NRE burns away. That's when you have to start dealing with this person as an all-around human being, replete with irritating little habits. When disillusion sets in, love can begin.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
Relationships unlock certain parts of who we are supposed to be.
— Donald Miller
That happens a lot with Shakespeare. The women go after what they want the men wind up suckered into things.
— Gayle Forman, Just One Day
The more a woman appreciates the hunting prowess of her man, the more he will kill for her.
— Michael DiMarco, Cupidity: 50 Stupid Things People Do For Love And How To Avoid Them
If you stay in the company of anger, pain, or hurt, happiness will find someone else to visit.
— Kristen Crockett, The Gift of Past Relationships
(In reference to swingers) In the meantime, if you wish to declare yourself polyamorous, get used to the fact that the confusion is gong to remain as a pejorative. Sure, clear up the misunderstanding as much as you can, but don't put too much effort into setting yourself up as a "good", responsible, community-oriented polyamorist by contrasting yourself to the "bad" swingers - they may not be your siblings, but they're definitely your cousins.
— Anthony D. Ravenscroft, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless and Hopeful: An Introduction on Polyamory
Maybe it's impossible to find everything you want in one person. Maybe everyone in your life gives you certain things you need. And your friends give you the rest of what you can't get from your boyfriend.
— Susane Colasanti, Take Me There
Every specific human being, however, thinks, judges, imagines, wills and expresses himself or herself in a unique, dissimilar, and unrepeatable mode--a mode of unpredictable difference, or otherness, which objectively defies description or delimitation.
— Christos Yannaras, Relational Ontology
She is my friend, and there is nothing you can say or do that can stop me from helping her.
— Peter G. Nogel
You are set free whenever you love—even those who believe you're crazy.
— Jef Murray, Seer: A Wizard's Journal
Hmm. Relationships between fathers and sons can be notoriously difficult, especially for two men who are as different as you and your father are.""Yes, and he's also the king--that makes our relationship impossible.
— Lynn Austin, Gods and Kings
You can trust everyone to be human, with all the quirks and inconsistencies we humans display, including disloyalty, dishonesty and downright treachery. We are all capable of the entire range of human behavior, given the circumstances, from absolute saintliness to abject depravity. Trusting someone to limit their sphere of action to one narrow band on the spectrum is idealistic and will inevitably lead to disappointment.On the other hand, you can decide to trust that everyone is doing their best according to their particular stage of development, and to give everyone their appropriate berth. For this to work, you have to trust yourself to make and have made the right choices that will lead you on the path to your healthy growth. You have to trust yourself to come through every experience safely and enriched. But don’t trust what I am saying. Listen and then decide for yourself. Does this information sit easily in your belly? You know when you trust yourself around someone because your belly feels settled and your heart feels warm.
— Stephen Russell, Barefoot Doctor's Guide to the Tao: A Spiritual Handbook for the Urban Warrior
What the trees can do handsomely-greening and flowering, fading and then the falling of leaves-human beings cannot do with dignity, let alone without pain.
— Martha Gellhorn
It's like the old question, "Do you lock your house to keep people out, or to protect what's inside?" Should a person act modestly and dress modestly in order to prevent intrusion from the outside, undesirable things from happening, or to preserve and maintain what is inside: the delicate and sensitive ability to have and maintain an intimate relationship.
— Manis Friedman, Doesn't Anyone Blush Anymore: Love, Marriage and the Art of Intimacy
We can't talk about it, or I know she won't so I don't even try, but it's what goes unsaid between people tat builds up like masonry. You have to either knock the bricks out with other things, or let them keep stacking until eventually you are alone in a room.
— Justin Taylor
Instructions For WayfarersThey will declare: Every journey has been taken.You shall respond: I have not been to see myself.They will insist: Everything has been spoken.You shall reply: I have not had my say.They will tell you: Everything has been done.You shall reply: My way is not complete.You are warned: Any way is long, any way is hard.Fear not. You are the gate - you, the gatekeeper.And you shall go through and on . . .—Alexandros Evangelou Xenopouloudakis,THIRD WISH
— Robert Fulghum, Robert Fulghum Boxed Set
He told me that from now on, everything I did and everything he did was of the utmost importance: any word spoken, the slightest gesture, would take on a meaning, and everything that happened between us would change us continually. 'For that reason,'he said,'I wish I were able to suspend time at this moment and keep things exactly at this point, because I feel this instant is a true beginning. We have a definite but unknown quantity of experience at our disposal. As soon as the hourglass is turned, the sand will begin to run out and once it starts, it cannot stop until it's all gone. That's why I wish I could hold it back at the start. We should make a minimum of gestures, pronounce a minimum of words, even see each other as seldom as possible, if that would prolong things. We don't know how much of everything we have ahead of us so we have to take the greatest precautions not to destroy the beauty of what we have. Everything exists in limited quantity-especially happiness. If a love is to come into being, it is all written down somewhere, and also its duration and content. If you could arrive at the complete intensity the first day, it would be ended the first day. And so if it's something you want so much that you'd like to have it prolonged in time, you must be extremely careful not to make the slightest excessive demand that might prevent it from developing to the greatest extent over the longest period...If the wings of the butterfly are to keep their sheen, you mustn't touch them. We mustn't abuse something which is to bring light into both our lives. Everything else in my life only weighs me down and shuts out the light. This thing wih you seems like a window that is opening up. I want it to remain open...
— Françoise Gilot, Life with Picasso
Yes,” said Mamma, “this is the worst of life, that love does not give us common sense but is a sure way of losing it. We love people, and we say that we are going to do more for them than friendship, but it makes such fools of us that we do far less, indeed sometimes what we do could be mistaken for the work of hatred.
— Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows
He mentioned the connection between us. He identified with me. These are the things that many people want to hear, that most “normal” people want to be able to truthfully say, but almost no one can.
— Rasmenia Massoud, Human Detritus
I couldn't take much more of this. Being the object two men competed for wasn't as glamorous as it sounded in the movies. The two men who both wanted one hundred percent of my time weren't dashing, international playboys. They were undead and surprisingly immature, considering the youngest was just over a hundred years old.
— Jenny Trout, Ashes to Ashes
Sound crazy? It may well be, but it is precisely in relationships of intimacy that your craziness (and mine) will be hardest to conceal. p.215
— Stephanie Dowrick, Intimacy and Solitude: Balancing Closeness and Independence
The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way - the pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body and they gave practically everybody their money.
— Timothy J. Keller
There's nothing wrong with wanting to be with someone.""There is when your only reason is the being, not the someone.
— Jet Mykles
Betsy hadn't had sex, actual; sex-sex, full sex, in two hundred and fifty-three days. She decided on her thirty-seventh birthday that she wouldn't sleep with anyone unless it was in the context of a committed relationship which had some sort of future, and she was only gradually coming to the realization of what happens when a woman her age makes a decision like that: she never has sex again.
— Sarah Dunn, Secrets to Happiness
...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with only the added difficulty that whereas families are at least well-recognised and sanctioned loci for hysteria reminiscent of scenes from Medea, office life typically proceeds behind a mask of shallow cheerfulness, leaving workers grievously unprepared to handle the fury and sadness continually aroused by their colleagues.
— Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
But then you hear that he can't hear you, you see that he can't see you. You are not here--and you haven't even died yet. You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol on the ladies' room door.
— Melissa Bank, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
But I do not know what to tell myself. Stuart needs "space" and "time," as if this were physics and not a human relationship.
— Kathryn Stockett
Katie says, "You can't choose the time and place the when and where with whom you fall in love."She says, "It just happens like that weird feeling you get right before you fall asleep when you gasp in surprise because your muscles just relaxed and you feel like you are falling."She says, "Marcie, you shouldn't worry about it -- give it time to actually happen."I guess --I worry that I won't do it right.That it'll be the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong person.
— Sarah Tregay
Don't be too busy climbing the ladder of success and forget your most cherished relationships (friends, family, spouse, etc). EnjoyLife!
— Bernard Kelvin Clive
Never enter relationships. Otherwise, suffer the pains that come with it. Enjoy your individuality while you can.
— Arnold Arre, After Eden
If you worked out enough, maybe the man would too. Maybe you would be able to work it out together, as if the two of you were a puzzle that could be solved; otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by exercise. If you didn't work it out it was because one of you had the wrong attitude.
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
most men know what they hate few what they love
— Charles Caleb Colton
It is 10 PM now, and Godzilla has been sitting at his desk in front of his laptop for six to seven hours. He has accomplished hardly anything today. Godzilla is drinking a lot of beer. He can not stop smoking cigarettes. His room is blue with cigarette smoke, and Godzilla sits on a chair in there, minimizing and maximizing Mozilla Firefox repeatedly. He is not over his girlfriend's house because she said on the cell phone that she needed time, alone, to think about their relationship. Godzilla worries that he will not be able to take care of himself if they break up.
— Brandon Scott Gorrell
In the mainstream, with its illusion of unlimited relational possibilities, we can counter dissatisfaction in relationships by simply moving on in search of the "right people." But community...demands we cultivate friendships with people we might not choose ordinarily. Founding friendship on commitment rather than "chemistry" often requires adjustment...At the end of the day, however, we have found that any loss of chemistry in relationships is more than made up for with gains in meaning.
— Jose Panate-Aceves and John Hayes
For me, it´s sloth," I say. "Hedonistic sloth and escapism.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
She re-read his email four times, feeling offended and breathless, like he had casually grabbed her head and stuffed it into a pile of wet leaves.
— Molly Ringle, The Ghost Downstairs
This is what we do. Not so much argue as joust, in jest. We can't stop pushing and pulling the taffy of words and concepts.
— Larry Duberstein, The Twoweeks
She knew breaking up with Ethan was going to be a full-time job because being in a relationship with him had also been a full-time job.
— Richard Finney, Kicky-Wicky
When one has let go of that great hidden agenda that drives humanity and its varied histories, then one can begin to encounter the immensity of one's own soul. If we are courageous enough to say, "Not this person, nor any other, can ultimately give me what I want; only I can," then we are free to celebrate a relationship for what it can give.
— James Hollis, Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other
This is one of the marks of a truly safe person: they are confrontable.
— Henry Cloud, Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't
There are persons whom in my heart I despise, others I abhor. Yet I am not obliged to inform the one of my contempt, nor the other of my detestation. This kind of dissimulation...is a necessary branch of wisdom, and so far from being immoral...that it is a duty and a virtue.
— John  Adams
They can talk shit about each other behind the others' backs, but when it comes down to it, money is the one true race and everyone down here is the color of greenbacks and as tall as mountains.
— Richard Kadrey, Kill the Dead
Argumentation is a human enterprise that is embedded in a larger social and psychological context. This context includes (1) the total psyches of the two persons engaged in dialogue, (2) the relationship between the two persons, (3) the immediate situation in which they find themselves and (4) the larger social, cultural and historical situation surrounding them.
— Peter Kreeft, Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics
As important as your obligations as a doctor, lawyer or business leader will be, you are a human being first. And these human connections with spouse, with children and with friends are the most important investments you will ever make. At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent. One thing will never change. Fathers and Mothers, if you have children, they must come first. You must read to your children, you must hug your children and you must love your children…. Your success as a family, our success as a society depends not what happens at the White House, but what happens inside YOUR house.
— Barbara Bush
It takes two to have a fight.
— Roberta M. Gilbert, Extraordinary Relationships: A New Way of Thinking about Human Interactions
For the first time in my life, I felt the pain of missing people I had not yet left.
— Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors
Making someone feel obligated, pressured or forced into doing something of a sexual nature that they don't want to is sexual coercion. This includes persistent attempts at sexual contact when the person has already refused you. Nobody owes you sex, ever; and no means no, always.
— Miya Yamanouchi, Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women
What you reject today, you could accept tomorrow. And what you accept today, you could reject tomorrow. Never say never unless you can predict the future.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Judging Natalie as my mother had judged me was, I felt like telling her son, just my ass-backward way of showing love. I'd spent my life trying to translate that language, and now I realized I had come to speak it fluently. When was it that you realized the thread woven through your DNA carried the relationship deformities of your blood relatives as much as it did their diabetes and bone density? 
— Alice Sebold, The Almost Moon
I didn't want to pick at Micah and me until we unraveled. I wanted to leave it alone and enjoy it. I just didn't know how to do that.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, Micah
Look for the positive qualities in your client's negative behavior.
— Marilyn Suttle
Baths, she thought, were just like her relationships, all "ooh, ah" in the beginning and then suddenly, without warning, she had to get out, out, out!
— Liane Moriarty, Three Wishes
Mom has the Touch. She knows what flowers go with what occasions, what hors d'oeuvres work with what people. She believes passionately in the power of food to heal, restore, and stimulate relationships, and she has built a following of loyal customers who really hope she's right. If she's wrong, says Sonia, no one wants to know.
— Joan Bauer, Thwonk
The engineer’s ready capitulation, however, did not hide from the poet’s mother the sad realization that the adventure into which she had plunged so impulsively--and which had seemed so intoxicatingly beautiful--had no turned out to be the great, mutually fulfilling love she was convinced she had a full right to expect. Her father was the owner of two prosperous Prague pharmacies, and her morality was based on strict give-and-take. For her part, she had invested everything in love (she had even been willing to sacrifice her parents and their peaceful existence); in turn, she had expected her partner to invest an equal amount of capital of feelings in the common account. To redress the imbalance, she gradually withdrew her emotional deposit and after the wedding presented a proud, severe face to her husband.
— Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere
Finally, Carol said in a tone of hopelessness, "Darling, can I ask you to forgive me?" The tone hurt Therese more than the question. "I love you, Carol." "But do you see what it means?
— Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
Undeniable chemistry and horrific timing. They love each other.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
I lean against my sister's shoulder. "I thought lightning wasn't supposed to strike in the same place twice.""Sure it does," Izzy tells me. "But only if you're too dumb to move.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
Even a friendship needs an effort from both sides, how can we expect a relationship to work from the effort of one..!! It should be a true-hearted commitment from both involve.
— Akansh Malik, Love Heals Everything
It was the impatience of the way he tore my panties from my body, that really turned me on: I was all he could think of, as his lust got the better of
— Fiona Thrust, Naked and Sexual
In some ways, we will always be different. In other ways, we will always be the same. There is always room to disagree and blame, just as there is always room to take a new perspective and empathize. Understanding is a choice.
— Vironika Tugaleva
12% of people marry because they are completely in love. 88% of people marry just so they are then liable for only half of their rent.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If you have nothing in common with the person you are dating and his parents hate you and your friends hate him, this is not romantic; it's a bad idea.
— Amy E. Spiegel, Letting Go of Perfect: Women, Expectations, and Authenticity
I am a diamond in the rut. A diamond to an untrained eye looks like a rock stone. So men will kick it around on the ground. It takes a man with an expert eye for fine Jewelry to notice its worth. Do not feel bad when men treat you like the little boys in Africa who gave away stones in exchange for candy. The hungry boys thought they were getting something better but had exchange wealth for a sugar high. Some men will do that. Exchange a valuable woman for the transient high of another. The boys didn't know better and so do some of these men. They don't know your worth.
— Crystal Evans, Ten Things Your Mother Should Have Told You about Dating
Nakajima’s past would always be there, so the foundation could crumble at any moment. That’s what happens, I realized, when people destroy other people.
— Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake
There's this total manwhore phenomenon happening, where even the geeks are player now. It's like Manhattan is this giant playground and guys want to keep playing forever.
— Susane Colasanti, Take Me There
Strangers will show you the wayBut a true friend will escort you,to your destination.1st November, 2006
— Tushar Mangl
Different people have different ways of defining, living and maintaining relationships. Your way is not the only right way, it is merely your way. As far as right way is concerned, there isn't any. It is all about different opinions and perceptions.
— Arti Honrao
But even so, I wondered--how well do we really ever know someone?
— Beth Hoffman, Looking for Me
What I want to impart through our correspondence is that no matter what anyone may be going through, here's the thing: If you love each other, and if your relationship is worth the pain or the hardship, stay with it. The extraordinary treasure of sharing another person's life is one of the most gratifying experiences of being a human being.
— Lorri Davis, Yours for Eternity: A Love Story on Death Row
I had a dream about you. We were ice fishing in my freezer. I caught a few cold beers, and you wondered if we should drink them, or throw them back because they were babies. 
— Dora J. Arod, I Had a Dream About You
My brother, Langston, said, “Lily, you don’t understand because you’ve never been in love. If you had a boyfriend, you’d understand.” Langston has a new boyfriend and all I understand from that is a sorry state of co-dependence.
— Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares
I had a dream about you. You were wearing Sylvester Stallone's sneer as pants, but his lips were saggy on your legs, so you had to wear a mustache as a belt. 
— Dora J. Arod, I Had a Dream About You
In a sudden and soundless eruption, as if he has fallen into a waking dream, a stream of images pours down, images of women he has known on two continents, some from so far away in time that he barely recognizes them. Like leaves blown on the wind, pell-mell, they pass before him. A fair field full of folk: hundreds of lives all tangled with his. He holds his breath, willing the vision to continue.What has happened to them, all those women, all those lives? Are there moments when they too, or some of them, are plunged without warning into the ocean of memory? The German girl: is it possible that at this very instant she is remembering the man who picked her up on the roadside in Africa and spent the night with her? Enriched: that was the word the newspapers picked on to jeer at. A stupid word to let slip, under the circumstances, yet now, at this moment, he would stand by it. By Melanie, by the girl in Touws River; by Rosalind, Bev Shaw, Soraya: by each of them he was enriched, and by the others too, even the least of them, even the failures. Like a flower blooming in his breast, his heart floods with thankfulness.
— J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
You know what she's made of.""Yeah, good stock, good breeding, a hard head and a hunger to win." She flashed him a smile as they approached the kitchen door. "I've been told that describes me. I'm half Irish, Brian, I was born stubborn.""No arguing with that. A person might make the world a calmer place for others by being passive, but you don't get very far in it yourself, do you?""Look at that. We have a foundation of agreement. Now tell me you like spaghetti and meatballs.""It happens to be a favorite of mine.""That's handy. Mine, too. And I heard a rumor that's what's for dinner." She reached for the doorknob, then caught him off guard by brushing a light kiss over his lips. "And since we'll be joining my parents, it would probably be best if you didn't imagine me naked for the next couple of hours."She sailed in ahead of him, leaving Brian helplessly and utterly aroused.
— Nora Roberts, Irish Rebel
I had a dream about you. You looked like you, but you also looked like a mannequin. And I looked like me, but I also looked like a mannequin. Between the two of us, we were too fake even for Hollywood. And as such, we were forced to reside in Washington DC. 
— Dark Jar Tin Zoo, I Had a Dream About You
You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.
— Alain de Botton
... the best way of killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud.
— José Saramago, The Cave
Something snapped inside her. “Of course I’m afraid! Relationships do bad things to me.” He started to respond, but the pain had gone on long enough, and she didn’t want to hear it. “You know what I want? I want peace. I want a good job and a decent place to live. I want to read books and listen to music and have time to make some female friendships that are going to last. When I wake up in the morning, I want to know that I have a decent shot at being happy. And here’s what’s really sad. Until I met you, I was almost there.
— Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Ain't She Sweet
Give her the continent and she wanted the hemisphere.
— Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
The best foundation for relationships to grow, flourish, and succeed is a deep-rooted friendship.
— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Friends 2 Lovers: The Unthinkable
A certain amount of volatility and drama can me healthy and keep things fun and interesting if you're willing at any moment during a fight to say, 'This means nothing. I love you, let's forget about it.
— Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
Even "meant to be" takes work.
— Donna Lynn Hope
This is the list you carry in your pocket, of the things you plan to say to Kay, when you find him, if you find him:1. I’m sorry that I forgot to water your ferns while you were away that time.2. When you said that I reminded you of your mother, was that a good thing?3. I never really liked your friends all that much.4. None of my friends ever really liked you.5. Do you remember when the cat ran away, and I cried and cried and made you put up posters, and she never came back? I wasn’t crying because she didn’t come back. I was crying because I’d taken her to the woods, and I was scared she’d come back and tell you what I’d done, but I guess a wolf got her, or something. She never liked me anyway.6. I never liked your mother.7. After you left, I didn’t water your plants on purpose. They’re all dead.8. Goodbye.9. Were you ever really in love with me?10. Was I good in bed, or just average?11. What exactly did you mean, when you said that it was fine that I had put on a little weight, that you thought I was even more beautiful, that I should go ahead and eat as much as I wanted, but when I weighed myself on the bathroom scale, I was exactly the same weight as before, I hadn’t gained a single pound?12. So all those times, I’m being honest here, every single time, and anyway I don’t care if you don’t believe me, I faked every orgasm you ever thought I had. Women can do that, you know. You never made me come, not even once.13. So maybe I’m an idiot, but I used to be in love with you.14. I slept with some guy, I didn’t mean to, it just kind of happened. Is that how it was with you? Not that I’m making any apologies, or that I’d accept yours, I just want to know.15. My feet hurt, and it’s all your fault.16. I mean it this time, goodbye.
— Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen
did you ever think the reason you haven't found the right man is because it's not your time? Sometimes God kets bad things happen to us as a sign that something is not right. He also does it to make us stronger. God got a plan for you, and you gotta stop fighting it. Focus on YOU, and let God lead that man to you.
— Braya Spice, Dear Drama
How we perceive, feel about and respond to people and situations is far more guided by the lessons of early childhood than we would like to believe. We may be adults, chronologically and physically, but too often the youngest parts of our personality are invisibly, yet actively, living our lives.
— Charlette Mikulka, Peace in the Heart and Home: A Down-to-Earth Guide to Creating a Better Life for You and Your Loved Ones
I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters.
— Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men
I shall now explain my plan. You may then speak, but only to amend the detail. The broad outline is not subject to negotiation. Are you ready? Good … I propose to have sex with you. I believe it will be excellent sex. Your obedience on one particular issue of timing it will be required to make it unforgettable sex. I will explain that issue as we go. At the moment, I wish to hear your inevitable objection to the general sex part of this plan.
— Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker
A relationship could be a place to hide too.
— Deb Caletti, The Story of Us