Closeness Quotes

It's tough for parents to talk to children about heavy-weight topics such as peer pressure, drugs and morality if they don't already have a closeness. A parent can't just all of a sudden pick out an hour and talk to a son about being morally clean if the parent and child haven't spent much time together for three or four years. I think closeness is developed more quickly by having fun together. ~ David A. Bednar

Jesus Christ does not teach us a spirituality 'of closed eyes,' but one of 'alertness,' one which entails an absolute duty to take notice of the needs of others and of situations involving those whom the Gospel tells us are our neighbors ... The gaze of Jesus, what 'his eyes' teach us, leads to human closeness, solidarity, giving time, sharing our gifts and even our material goods. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Discontented people might talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness in the Commons, and the necessity of reforming the Commons, said Mr. Spenlow solemnly, in conclusion; but when the price of wheat per bushel had been highest, the Commons had been busiest; and a man might lay his hand upon his heart, and say this to the whole world, - 'Touch the Commons, and down comes the country!' I listened to all this with attention; and though, ~ Charles Dickens

My cheeks burned: with disillusionment, with the feverish afterglow of confrontation, but most hotly with embarrassment. I had perceived a closeness where none existed. ~ Kate Morton

No one outside of our family unit would ever guess that away from prying eyes, we were systematically tearing ourselves apart. Away from the outside world, everyone in our family started to fall to pieces, and never really recovered. Even though our times together are always fun and laughter-filled, the closeness we once shared is gone. In its place is guilt, regret, the ability to say the nastiest things and, for the longest minute on earth, mean every word of them ~ Dorothy Koomson

Classics is a subject that exists in that gap between us and the word of the Greeks and Romans. The questions raised by Classics are the questions raised by our distance from 'their' world, and at the same time by our closeness to it, and its familiarity to us. In our museums, in our literature, languages, culture, and ways of thinking. The aim of Classics is not only to discover or uncover the ancient world (though that is part of it, as the rediscovery of Bassae, or the excavation of the furthest outposts of the Roman empire on the Scottish borders, shows). Its aim is to also define and debate our relationship to that world. ~ Mary Beard

Men seek a great deal, but fatally close, albeit very different, is one's pride in proving oneself right with one's zeal for finding the truth. ~ Criss Jami

I gauge the closeness of my friends even now by how helplessly they can make me laugh. ~ Barbara Quick

Sanny,' he said quietly, emphatically, 'besides all the obvious aspects of love - the infatuation, the attraction, the feelings of closeness and belonging - besides all that, Sanny, love is a decision. That's what keeps it going in the long run, through bad time and difficult situation,' Mark said softly. 'Love isn't just something you feel, some state of mind you have no control over. Love needs nurturing to stay alive, and that is a conscious decision every day, Sanny. It expresses itself in all the little daily things that happen between people.' His hands slid down her back and he drew her closer. 'Love doesn't just stop or fly out the window. It dies from neglect.'
He paused.
'Sanny,' he continued softly, 'I love you. My promise to you is that I will not neglect that love. ~ Karen Van Der Zee

We were all basically alone, and despite what all his studies had shown what was mistaken for closeness was just a case of mitosis. ~ Andrew Bird

Once the
exhilaration of their reunion wore off, once the newness of their lovemaking was no longer so
new, how would she see him? No matter how careful he was, invariably someday he would
do something to make her angry. What then? Would all the old unhappiness rush to the fore?
Would she remember that he had once betrayed her and regret that she'd ever given him a
second chance?
Or would she protect herself from the beginning by keeping a certain distance from him, so
that their closeness would always fall short of true communion, always denying him that final
forgiveness so that he could never hurt her again? ~ Sherry Thomas

Our daily existence requires both closeness and distance, the wholeness of self, the wholeness of intimacy. ~ Judith Viorst

The swamp roses, Gillie. It was the mare found them. She - if she hadn't run off - it was almost as if she meant me to see them."
"Are you saying? ... "
"I don't know what I'm saying. Yes," she cried, a gay silliness taking her. Drunk with the music and the dancing, drunk with his closeness, she laughed up at him. It was just as in the stories, a kind of magic just like ... " and then she stared at him, confounded.
"Just like what?"
"But in the stories ... "
"In the stories ... what?"
"In the stories ... "
"In the stories there's a prince," Gillie answered quietly. He held her away then. "So the story has come true. ~ Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Here, let me help." Nick stepped behind her, reached around her body, and placed his hands over hers, steadying the rifle against her shoulder. At his touch, unusual tingling sensations coursed through her. "Look down the sights to the target," he murmured in her ear. His finger pressed over hers, guiding her movement. Her whole body warmed at his closeness. Too aware of him, she couldn't concentrate. She just closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger. The noise of the shot reverberated in her ears. The recoil of the gun sent her staggering back into Nick. His arms tightened around her. She lowered the rifle. "You missed," Nick's voice teased in her ear. Elizabeth's heart raced. She relaxed against his chest, loving the feel of his strong arms around her. ~ Debra Holland

At the Arrivals gate, we are greeted by a small crowd, watching us with hungry eyes or eyesockets. We drop our cargo on the floor: two mostly intact men, a few meaty legs, and a dismembered torso, all still warm. Call it leftovers. Call it takeout. Our fellow Dead fall on them and feast right there on the floor like animals. The life remaining in those cells will keep them from full-dying, but the Dead who don't hunt will never quite be satisfied. Like men at sea deprived of fresh fruit, they will wither in their deficiencies, weak and perpetually empty, because the new hunger is a lonely monster. It grudgingly accepts the brown meat and lukewarm blood, but what it craves is closeness, that grim sense of connection that courses between their eyes and ours in those final moments, like some dark negative of love. ~ Isaac Marion

The city (regardless which one it is) does provide a certain degree of sophistication and intellectualism. It offers the challenge of professional matters. It throws new and interesting people in one's path. There is a dynamic and an energy in cities which is diametric to the life-forces of the forest.
Still the cabin is the wellspring, the source, the hub of my existence. It gives me tranquility, a closeness of nature and wildlife, good health and fitness, a sense of security, the opportunity for resourcefulness, reflection and creative thinking ... ~ Anne LaBastille

Nothing is forgotten, all is permitted. In a stinking cave, muttering babies scream and scratch, furs undulate in copulation. In one corner, bright-eyed first marks are daubed on a wall. They are marks to function, marks of place, of time. They are marks to draw results and persist beyond one human lifetime. Instinct has arisen, snake-like, coiling itself into intuition and suggesting the very power of suggestion. No one noted down from a book this process, it grew from watching the elements, closeness to life-sources, death-forces that modern persons are divorced from. On this damp stone there is a curve, it is land, horizon, ejaculation, movement. ~ Genesis P-Orridge

Closeness isn't just an absence of distance, it means actively eliminating it. ~ David Glattauer

I do think it's strange that I get associated with Iraq more than the people who were Foreign Secretary or Defence Secretary. It's because of my closeness to Tony [Blair], which I don't regret at all. I think that was a privilege. ~ Alastair Campbell

So what should we do with our last few days?"
"I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you," Peete replies.
"Come on, then," I say, pulling him into my room.
It feels like a luxury, sleeping with Peeta again. I didn't realize until now how starved I've been for human closeness. For the feel of him beside me in the darkness. ~ Suzanne Collins

We don't understand how much those small moments of closeness mean to us until they're taken away. ~ Cassia Leo

You can't prevent a possible future closeness between your upcoming child and one or more of their grandparents. ~ Mallory Ortberg

It's the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It's seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can't watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor's tepee. Living close to nature is wonderful for your mental health. ~ Daniel Quinn

It's the last residue of our closeness with God, I reckon, the ability to see the wonder of things. ~ Celine Kiernan

We commonly confuse closeness with sameness and view intimacy as the merging of two separate I's into one worldview. ~ Harriet Lerner

I tried to put things in perspective but sometimes you're just too close to it. ~ Cormac McCarthy

There is some strange sense in which distance and closeness are sisters, the two sides of the one experience. Distance awakens longing; closeness is belonging. Yet they are always in a dynamic interflow with each other. When we fix or locate them definitively, we injure our growth. It is an interesting imaginative exercise to interchange them: to consider what is near as distant and to consider the distant as intimate. ~ John O'Donohue

I could still smell her on my fur. It clung to me, a memory of another world.
I was drunk with it, with the scent of her. I'd got too close.
The smell of summer on her skin, the half-recalled cadence of her voice, the sensation of her fingers on my fur. Every bit of me sang with the memory of her closeness.
Too close.
I couldn't stay away. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

If mothers are our first teachers, then having a narcissistic one teaches us that human closeness is terrifying, and the world is a heartless, inconsistent place. ~ Koren Zailckas

On the road leading from his ranch to Samantha's, Wyat t drove his surrey up a small hill and caught his breath as the beauty of the large crescent moon dangling just out of reach over the crest A full moon would have been plump with luminescence, yet the pearly surface of the sickle still cast enough light to shadow his surroundings and seemed close enough that once he drove to the top of the hill, he'd be able to touch the bottom horn or at least toss a rope around it. He slackened the reins, slowing the horse, knowing that the higher he climbed, the sooner the illusion of closeness would disappear and he wanted to preserve for a moment the fantasy that the moon was within his grasp.
The stars, by contrast, were distant pricks of diamond light farther out than a man could dream. He sighed. Life as a rancher or as a rancher's wife was not moon and stars easy or romantic. What would put stars in Samantha's eyes? ~ Debra Holland

The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, as water. We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it further with words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings? ~ Jorge Luis Borges

When you make a breakthrough it is a moment of scientific exhilaration because you have been on this search and seem to have found it. But it is also a moment where I at least feel closeness to the creator in the sense of having now perceived something that no human knew before but God knew all along. ~ Francis Collins

It is increasingly clear to me that my art relates more and more to a sublimation of my closeness to the natural world, it's events, light itself, and the positive it is a personal expression based on observation and reaction, that I am not able to define except in terms of the work itself. ~ Ansel Adams

The history of a city was like the history of a family - there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories. ~ John Irving

We were supposed to be practical. A wham, bam, thank-you ma'am. We weren't supposed to miss the sex, or the closeness, or the cuddling when this ends. ~ Lauren Blakely

From the first winter afternoon in the Harvard ball fields, "Oh no
I need you" had become an admission and a clarion call
the tenet of dependency that forms the weft of friendship. We needed each other so that we could count the endless days of forests and flat water, but the real need was soldered by the sadder, harder moments
discord or helplessness or fear
that we dared to expose to each other. It took me years to grasp that this grit and discomfort in any relationship are an indicator of closeness, not it's opposite. ~ Gail Caldwell

WHAT MAKES A GOOD LISTENER? 1. Not interrupting. 2. Showing that you empathize: not criticizing, arguing, or patronizing. 3. Establishing a physical sense of closeness without invading personal space. 4. Observing body language and letting yours show you are not distracted but attentive. 5. Offering your own self-disclosures, but not too many, or too soon. 6. Understanding the context of the other person's life. 7. Listening from all four levels: body, mind, heart, and soul. ~ Deepak Chopra

Before you tell me how we shouldn't be doing this - " did she dare say what she was thinking? " - I want you to remember how it felt when we were together, because I know you'd like to feel that way again."
His hands tightened at her waist and his entire body hardened against hers. She drew back enough to see his face and caught her breath at his expression. Desire and want, need. Not sexual but…the need for closeness, for a connection. For her. ~ Kay Stockham

While much has been written about the aggressive manifestations of male sexuality, it is not sufficiently appreciated that the erotic realm also offers men a restorative experience for their more tender side. The body is our original mother tongue, and for a lot of men it remains the only language of closeness that hasn't been spoiled. Through sex, men can recapture the pure pleasure of connection without having to compress their hard-to-articulate needs into the prison of words. ~ Esther Perel

I remember us saying that we liked small houses, that proximity engendered closeness in a family. That nobody should be raised by a nanny or in day care. I remember us saying that time, not money, was the greatest resource. That everything would be all right. That the universe would provide. That belief was a force more powerful than gravity itself. ~ Jonathan Evison

In the afternoon dark clouds suddenly color the sky a mysterious shade and it starts raining hard, pounding the roof and windows of the cabin. I strip naked and run outside, washing my face with soap and scrubbing myself all over. It feels wonderful. In my joy I shut my eyes and shout out meaningless words as the large raindrops strike me on the cheeks, the eyelids, chest, side, penis, legs, and butt - the stinging pain like a religious initiation or something. Along with the pain there's a feeling of closeness, like for once in my life the world's treating me fairly. I feel elated, as if all of a sudden I've been set free. I face the sky, hands held wide apart, open my mouth wide, and gulp down the falling rain. ~ Haruki Murakami

There was a fine line between love and hate you heard that cliche all the time. But no one told you that the moment you crossed it would be the one you least expected. You'd fall in love and crack open a secret door to let your soul mate in. You just never expected such closeness one day to feel like an intrusion. ~ Jodi Picoult

Somehow, later, exhausted and dismayed by these sapping, abrasive, attriting episodes, they came to a sort of truce; but it was at the expense of any closeness. ~ Iain M. Banks

Attraction is essentially your intuition assessing the situation before your conscious mind gets the chance to. Attraction is your subconscious picking up on subtle cues that it likes before your conscious mind understands exactly what it is it's liking. I find evidence for this in the fact that attraction is often described as a spiritual or psychic experience, as a meeting of the minds or a melding of hearts. Love at first sight. Instant connection. Attraction is simply a finger pointing toward potential closeness. ~ Kira Asatryan

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated to closeness and the bettering of my mind. ~ William Shakespeare

Still, we've attempted to argue when necessary; you've got to be able to let loose and even lose your temper a bit if you're finding it hard to breathe. Closeness has to be like running water; it mustn't stagnate and sour. ~ Oddny Eir

We must open our eyes to admire God who hides and at the same time reveals himself in things and introduces us into the realms of mystery ... we must be pure and simple like children, capable of admiring, being astonished, of marveling, and being enchanted by the divine gestures of love and closeness we witness. ~ Pope John Paul II

I want to express my closeness to the people of the Philippines who have been struck by a strong earthquake, and I invite you to pray for that dear nation, which in recent days has suffered different calamities. ~ Pope Francis

I didn't realize until now how starved I've been for human closeness. ~ Suzanne Collins

While struggling with all the loss in her life, she mournfully thought, "If only I could forget ... " But that would be too easy, wouldn't it? However, she did with most; she never got too close and she never stayed too long, but there she was ... struggling with all the loss in her life. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

I pulled, allowing her body to slide down mine. I kept my hands at her waist to slow her descent. The shifting of her body against mine was heavenly. She sucked in a breath, and when our faces were level, her eyes were not narrowed, but closed. Her lips weren't pursed, but her bottom lip was caught between her teeth in a way that made my mouth dry. Her cheeks were still flushed, but I had a feeling it wasn't about anger anymore.
"You did that on purpose," she said.
I laughed, and it came out raspy. She wasn't the only one affected by our closeness. "I definitely did that on purpose. I think we should make this a post-show ritual actually. ~ Cora Carmack

Really to believe in human nature while striving to know the thousand forces that warp it from its ideal development-to call for and expect much from men and women, and not to be disappointed
and embittered if they fall short- to try to do good with people rather than to them- this is my religion on its human side. And if God exists, I think that he must be in the warm sun, in the kindly actions of the people we know and read of, in the beautiful things of art and nature, and in the closeness of friendships. ~ Randolph Bourne

Dan didn't know how violently he was biting. Just the absolute closeness. Once upon a time he'd hated that body, smashed it, kicked it, beat it into a bleeding pulp, but now he wanted to crawl into it, or kill it, and maim it, to possess it, eat, tear, destroy it, to take it and never leave it again.
His. The body was his, the man was his. His, his, his alone! ~ Marquesate

These values are signposts toward another way of living: simplicity of living, as much as possible, to retain a true awareness of life; balance of physical, intellectual, and spiritual life; work without pressure; space for significance and beauty; time for solitude and sharing; closeness to nature to strengthen understanding and faith in the intermittency of life. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Estrangement and belonging, an effect of distance and closeness at the same time. ~ Elena Ferrante

We come into the world alone. We go away the same. We're meant to spend the interlude between in closeness or so we tell ourselves. But it's a long way from the morning to the evening. ~ Rod McKuen

Once I study up on them and the case, I always feel closer to the victims. That closeness drives me to find them or their killers. As if the dead speak to me from within the pages of the case files. ~ J.R. Rain

It is in the nature of man that he is antagonistic toward the others of his sex. Each man sees in another a potential competitor for the limited rewards of male success, and the hostility which arises between them is a part of the natural balance of human life.
It is possible, as in the case of father and son, that a closeness will arise between two men which threatens the functional hostility of each. It is the duty of society to provide an artificial means of encouraging the proper degree of antagonism. ~ C.S. Friedman

I want you to judge me without thinking about it.
I want you to give me advice without considering my opinion.
I want you to expecting anything without the need to trust me.
I want you to decide for me with all the care in the world.
I want you to help me without smothering me.
I want you to decide without seeing my point of view.
I want you to hug me without holding me...
I want you to feel protected in my presence without me having to lie.
I want you to be close without suffocating me.
I want you to know everything without knowing anything...
I want you to know that both love and friendship should always be Unconditional. ~ Stefan Dimov

Also the natural sexual functions of establishing an intimate human contact frequently assume greater proportions. This is a well known fact about detached people for whom sexuality may be the only bridge to others, but it is not restricted to being an obvious substitute for human closeness. It shows also in the haste with which people may rush into sexual relations, without giving themselves a chance to find out whether they have anything in common or a chance to develop a liking and understanding. It is possible of course that an emotional relatedness may evolve later on. But more often than not it does not do so because usually the initial rush itself is a sign of their being too inhibited to develop a good human relationship. ~ Karen Horney

I wanted to make him understand that we shared the details of our lives, because they were the threads that braided us so closely together. And you would have been certain to tell me about a Sabatier knife, because it would have had the rare value of being a detail in your life which tied directly into mine - Bee in Sister ~ Rosamund Lupton

father and there wouldn't be a thing you could do about it." Anetta felt her stomach flutter at the closeness of him. His arm around her waist was like steel and all she could think of was heat. It radiated from him like the hot Texas sun outside. She gazed up into his stormy eyes and watched ~ Cia Leah

Many problems that confront us today are created by man, whether they are violent conflicts, destruction of the environment, poverty or hunger. These problems can be resolved thanks to human efforts by understanding that we are brother and sister and by developing this sense of closeness. We must cultivate a universal responsibility toward each other and extend it to the planet that we have to share. ~ Dalai Lama

In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall ... ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Promises, is very much hidden. While trusting in their Savior for pardon and for help, and seeking to some extent to obey Him, they have hardly realized to what closeness of union, to what intimacy ~ Andrew Murray

Amy and I needed each other. Neither of us really had other close friends. We were the type who were friendly with everyone... I think most people felt sort of left out when they spent time with Amy and me. There was too much history, too many inside jokes, and, yeah, maybe our closeness was a little bit weird to some. ~ Kody Keplinger

The importance of discretion increases with closeness to the top of a hierarchical organization. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Cities can be lonely places, and in admitting this we see that loneliness doesn't necessarily require physical solitude, but rather an absence or paucity of connection, closeness, kinship: an inability, for one reason or another, to find as much intimacy as is desired. ~ Olivia Laing

Play is also a way to be close and, even more important, a way to reconnect after the closeness has been severed. Chimpanzees like to tickle one another's palms, especially after they have had a fight. Thus, the second purpose of play serves our incredible - almost bottomless - need for attachment and affection and closeness. ~ Lawrence J. Cohen

Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failutre that his life must appear to be. He had wanted friendship and the closeness of friendship that might hold him in the race of mankind; he had had two friends, one of whom had died senselessly before he was known, the other of whom had now withdrawn so distantly into the ranks of the living that... He had wanted the singleness and the still connective passion of marriage; he had had that, too, and he had not known what to do with it, and it had died. He had wanted love; and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality. Katherine, he thought. "Katherine."

And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one. He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else?

What did you expect? he asked himself. ~ John Williams

But happiness is a difficult thing-it is, as Aristotle posited in The Nicomachean Ethics, an activity, is is about good social behavior, about being a solid citizen. Happiness is about community, intimacy, relationships, rootedness, closeness, family, stability, a sense of place, a feeling of love. And in this country, where people move from state to state and city to city so much, where rootlessness is almost a virtue ("anywhere I hang my hat ... is someone else's home"), where family units regularly implode and leave behind fragments of divorce, where the long loneliness of life finds its antidote not in a hardy, ancient culture (as it would in Europe), not in some blood-deep tribal rites (as it would in the few still-hale Third World nations), but in our vast repository of pop culture, of consumer goods, of cotton candy for all-in this America, happiness is hard. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

If you are seeking closeness to the Beloved, love everyone.
Whether in their presence or absence, see only their good.
If you want to be as clear and refreshing as the
breath of the morning breeze,
like the Sun have nothing but warmth and light for everyone. ~ Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Khair

Tonight there was something different. Something both deeper and shallower than friendship. Familiarity, perhaps, the sudden realisation that we lived our sealed-up little lives in closeness to each other. That we had something to share and something to lose. Something to protect together. ~ Alexis Hall

In this state, drugged by the rainy dusk, she almost always returned with sensual closeness to seaside childhood; once more she felt her heels in the pudding-softness of the hot tarred esplanade or her bare arm up to the elbow in rain-wet tamarisk. She smelt the shingle and heard it being sucked by the sea. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

It's easy to lose sight of God when life is sweet and easy, but there is something awesome about despair, and it is the closeness of God when we are at our weakest. ~ Kristin Armstrong

If one stays too long with friends They will soon tire of him; Living in such closeness leads to dislike and hate. It is but human to expect and demand too much When one dwells too long in companionship. ~ Milarepa

Out would come another star, winking at me over the white shoulder of the Rothorn. Round me stood the mountains, exquisite examples of peace - A world above man's head, to let him see How boundless might his soul's horizons be - and here was I, minding because guests went into their bedrooms and told each other I had five children. Well, so I had. Nothing could possibly be more true. How vast, yet of what clear transparency - and minding because they said I was forty, which I certainly would be some day, if I went on living at the rate I was doing. How it were good to abide there and be free - The fact was, I reflected, my eyes on the glittering slopes of the Weisshorn, we were all too close together, and my guests, being of one family, only made this closeness worse. The remedy - it burst upon me suddenly in a flash, - was not to waste my serenity vainly longing for the guests I had to go, but to invite yet more of them. Unrelated ones. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

Closeness was the promise of suffering and pain ~ Alice Jamieson

I could not be greedy, about money, I could not be greedy about miles or rides, and I could not be greedy about closeness with people; all things come in their own time, and are not mine to keep or covet - just to enjoy and learn from. ~ Irv Thomas

There was no place more solitary than a dark room, with its murky light and fetid closeness. ~ Amitav Ghosh

The closeness of American culture with the church caused many sectors of the American church to read the Bible as though the Bible were pointing us to America itself. That's why endless recitations of 2 Chronicles 7:14 focused on revival in the nation as a means to national blessing, without ever seeming to ask who the "my people" of this text actually are, and what it means, in light of the gospel, to be "blessed. ~ Russell D. Moore

Over and over again in my life, I find closeness to other people and proximity to other people really painful; that's part of my mental illness, social anxiety. Closeness to other people is really hard, but it's also a shame because it's all you want too. But it doesn't always work. ~ Adam Duritz

That day, that moment, opened a curiosity of bodies,
shaped us as irrevocably as our first kiss, our first realizations. You go into that moment never really knowing
if the closeness will wear well, if it is something that should
happen. I know she wasn't sure of me, and I wasn't sure of me, either. But we discovered something in the unspoken,
found care in our caring whispers, instinctive. ~ David Levithan

Sometimes, people take for granted the closeness that they share when life is good and there's no need for friendship or support. ~ Christine Brae

Very little, really, in life is lost; material things, now and then; money which is material but necessary, often; friends, relatives, sometimes through estrangements. True love never, I believe. Death does not rob us of the essential person we have loved and still love. It deprives us of the physical presence, but never of the spiritual closeness, or of memories. ~ Faith Baldwin

He swallowed again. "Why?"
When I opened my mouth to answer, my lips started trembling - from nerves or regret I don't know - and it took a few seconds to actually force the words out. "Because you have to find Nicholas. And I can't handle that right now. I know I said I could, but I can't." Breathing as deeply as I could, I took Daniel's closeness inside me, feeling all the while like I was on the edge of suffocating. "I'm about to fall apart, and I need time."
"I need you."
"You need me to kill-"
"No!" Daniel's face flushed, and he fixed his mouth shut, inhaling rapidly through his nose while trying to regain control. "You aren't going anywhere near Dmitri. Not ever. He's my responsibility. ~ Angela B. Wade

…Changing yourself to fit what you think other people want doesn't work. Pretending to be someone other than yourself only broadens the distance between the person you are and the one with whom you're trying to establish closeness. ~ Mary Manin Morrissey

With so much unknown in this life, how little it takes for a face, a grove of trees, an outcropping of stone to become familiar. ~ Larry Watson

When I was younger, I craved friendship and closeness. I make bonds without acknowledging how quickly and permanently they would break. I took people lives' personally. I felt their friends could be my friends, their parents could be their parents. But after awhile, I had to stop. It was too heartbreaking to live with too many separations. ~ David Levithan

There is a magic to intimacy, a world built of sighs and skin that is thicker than brick, stronger than iron. There is only you, and him, so impossibly close that nothing can come between. Not the enemy, not your allies. In this safe haven, in this hallowed place and time, I could even ask the questions whose answers I feared. ~ Jodi Picoult

The white man had invented glasses which made objects too near or too far, cameras, telescopes, spyglasses, objects which put glass between living and vision. It was the image he sought to possess, not the texture, the living warmth, the human closeness. ~ Anais Nin

Closeness to power heightens the dignity of all men. ~ Theodore White

In my stolen photographs
for the photographer must be a thief, he must steal instants of other people's time to make his own tiny eternities
it was this intimacy I sought, hte closeness of the living and the dead. ~ Salman Rushdie

By the external appearance of your knowledge, you have attained (high) ranks and reverence with the people! So seek with Allah higher ranks and closeness by virtue of your hidden good deeds. And know that these two ranks, one cancels out the other. ~ Wuhayb Ibn Al-Wird

Even when I press against him his presence is too far away. ~ Johnny Rich

Basically, secure people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving; anxious people crave intimacy, are often preoccupied with their relationships, and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back; avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness. ~ Amir Levine

So the highlands?"
Ira nodded and tugged the reins, moving up the trail. Oscar swung his rifle to the back, away from Camille. She slid down the dip in the saddle; the press of her body against Oscar's was unladylike, even for her. She imagined Randall's rigid glare if he saw her right then, cradled in Oscar's protective arms. Could this be all it would take for him to call off the wedding? To pull out his investments?
"You might have more room if you rode with Ira," Oscar said softly, his chest vibrating as he spoke. Surely, Randall would agree. But the enfold of Oscar's arms and chest was as comforting and reassuring as it was improper. She pushed the image of Randall aside.
"If it's all right with you, I'd rather stay here," Camille replied. She hung on to the horn of the saddle as they started to wind through the woods once more. Oscar leveled his lips with her ear.
"I'd rather you stay here, too." He closed his arms around her a little bit tighter. She blushed, knowing she should reprimand him for being so bold. But his boldness exhilarated her more than it bothered her. In fact, it didn't bother her at all.
Ira glanced over his shoulder. She half expected one of his coy grins as he regarded the closeness of Oscar's arms, but instead she received only an intent stare and a question.
"Just what the devil does that map lead to? ~ Angie Frazier

The New Englander landed on a stony, barren tract, and a large share of his strength during two centuries has gone to force a living out of it. Hence he has come to regard economy - a necessary unpleasant quality at best - as the chief of virtues. He has cultivated habits which verge on closeness in dealing with food, and with the expression of feeling, and even - his enemies think - with feeling itself. ~ Rebecca Harding Davis

The Gospel teaches us what Jesus' kingdom requires of us ... Reminds us that closeness and tenderness are the rules of life. ~ Pope Francis