Intimacy Quotes

Too much intimacy, too quickly, can cause women to become needy and men to pull away. Just as men have a tendency to rush into physical intimacy, women make the mistake of rushing into complete emotional intimacy. ~ John Gray

I feel like in an interview situation, it's a kind of intimacy that I can understand and handle - versus in real life, when I'm much more of a bumbler and have a hard time. ~ Ira Glass

But there was human intimacy and connection, something that is hard to find in the modern world I inhabit today. ~ Yeonmi Park

It is dangerous to be so busy that you have no time to wait on God. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her
of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated
he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch. ~ Edith Wharton

We both grew so used to each other, so comfortable with the naturalness and ease of our friendship, that we became sloppy about keeping our relationship a secret. It was not that we were physically demonstrative or obviously in love, more that it had become impossible for us to hide our close involvement. We had gradually acquired the unmistakable air of old-love: finishing each other's sentences and speaking to each other with an offhand, presuming intimacy that was eventually noticed. ~ Kate Kerrigan

My bravery however was the effect of assurance for could I have believed the current report, I should have fled as fast as any man, no man can possibly have a greater reluctance to an intimacy with Sir William Howe than my Self. ~ Henry Laurens

Sadly, our culture raises man to be strong and silent. Straight or gay, the pressure is on from the time we're very young to become our culture's John Wayne-style of man.
* The more pain I can take, the more of a man I am.
* Showing feelings is for women.
* The more I can drink, the manlier I am.
* Intimacy is sex; sex is intimacy.
* Only women depend on others.
* A man takes care of himself without help from others.
* No one can hurt you if you're strong.
* I am what I earn.
* It is best to keep your problems to yourself.
* Winning is all that really matters.
Where did this stuff come from? It's everywhere in our society from the movies heroes we love to the politicians we vote for. Our culture demands that man fit in a tightly defined role. ~ Alan Downs

There is no more moving a professional relationship than that between a law clerk and a Supreme Court justice. As a place to work, the court is unique in its intimacy and intensity. ~ Cliff Sloan

If there is not laughter in intimacy, it becomes heavy, burdensome, and dull. At my best moments, the love dialogue I try to carry on with You each day is comic-what could be more comic than a human addressing the Ground of Being as an intimate? It's a kind of blasphemy that I dare because you have called for it, and that is pretty humorous, too. ~ Andrew Greeley

Only think of me and what I'm doing. There is intimacy in pain esclave. Let me make your pain my pleasure. ~ Pepper Winters

A lot of the heartache and confusion we feel in dating stems from treating dating mainly as practice for marriage (clarity through intimacy), instead of as discernment toward marriage (clarity and then intimacy). ~ Marshall Segal

With fame there is a crosswire between intensity and intimacy. You have decoy intimacy, but you are also very much alone. ~ Mike Myers

Being able to laugh at a situation can help you hang on to your perspective. And there's an intimacy in laughter that nothing else can come close to. ~ Eric Mabius

Noah's eyes held my face. I swallowed hard. The juxtaposition of him sitting in a room full of people while staring at no one but me was overwhelming. Something shifted inside of me at the intimacy of us, eyes locked amid the scraping of twenty graphite pencils on paper.
I shaded his face out of nothingness. I smudged the slope of his neck and darkened his delinquent mouth, while the lights accented the right angle of his jaw against the cloudy sky outside. I did not hear the bell. I did not hear the other students rise and leave the room. I did not even notice that Noah no longer sat at the stool. ~ Michelle Hodkin

In solitude, struggles occur that no one else knows about. Inner battles are fought here that seldom become fodder for sermons or illustrations for books. God, who probes our deepest thoughts during protracted segments of solitude, opens our eyes to things that need attention. It is here He makes us aware of those things we try to hide from others. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

As we grow into maturity in Christ our distinctiveness is accentuated, not blunted. General directions, useful as they are, don't take into account the details that face us as holiness takes root in the particular social and personal place we are planted. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale
and yet they weren't unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Anger is an assertion of rights and worth. It is communication, equality, and knowledge. It is intimacy, acceptance, fearlessness, embodiment, revolt, and reconciliation. Anger is memory and rage. It is rational thought and irrational pain. Anger is freedom, independence, expansiveness, and entitlement. It is justice, passion, clarity, and motivation. Anger is instrumental, thoughtful, complicated, and resolved. In anger, whether you like it or not, there is truth.

Anger is the demand of accountability. It is evaluation, judgment, and refutation. It is reflective, visionary, and participatory. It's a speech act, a social statement, an intention, and a purpose. It's a risk and a threat. A confirmation and a wish. It is both powerlessness and power, palliative and a provocation. In anger, you will find both ferocity and comfort, vulnerability and hurt. Anger is the expression of hope. ~ Soraya Chemaly

they both knew they could simply refuse if they really wanted to, and they both rarely did - after all, where else would they get to use their semaphores, that language that only had two speakers in the whole world? ~ Hanya Yanagihara

For a month we had been, I suppose, the thickest thieves in all London, and yet our intimacy was curiously incomplete. ~ E.W. Hornung

. . .in your light, had I learned to love, here
in your beauty, could I speak
knowing of this space close within
as the breath held inside a garden rose, there -
there is no time. ~ John Daniel Thieme

Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners, schedules, beepers. Chronos is time at her worst. Chronos keeps track ... Chronos is the world's time. Kairos is transcendence, infinity, reverence, joy, passion, love, the Sacred. Kairos is intimacy with the Real. Kairos is time at her best ... Kairos is Spirit's time. We exist in chronos. We long for kairos. That's our duality. Chronos requires speed so that it won't be wasted. Kairos requires space so that it might be savored. We do in chronos. In kairos we're allowed to be ... It takes only a moment to cross over from chronos into kairos, but it does take a moment. All that kairos asks is our willingness to stop running long enough to hear the music of the spheres. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

As I wandered around the room, with Sachiko by my side, I began to think how much we need space in those we love, space enough to accommodate growth and possibility. Knowledge must leave room for mystery; intimacy, taken too far, was the death of imagination. Keeping some little distance from her was, I thought, a way of keeping an open space, a silence for the imagination to fill.
"At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things," Thoreau had written, "we require that all things be mysterious and unexplainable. ~ Pico Iyer

She was afraid of us moving in together. With Mark, domestic intimacy had become domestic claustrophobia; and had riddled romance (though she never quite said this) like woodworm. It wasn't that she was resistant to the glamourlessness of stray toenails and washing up and underpants and mug-rings and hoovering and boredom; on the contrary: it was that she was horrified by her own willingness to sink so deeply into the comfort of such details. A no nonsense streak in her identified the ordinary with truth, the exotic with delusion. She and Mark had delighted in dehumbugging their own romance, had (she confessed) Larkinized themselves into mundanity addicts. In Mark's case (she suspected) because he knew deep down he had no magic in him; in her own because she knew deep down that she had too much (no nonsense streak or not), and that to release it would be to lose him - and perhaps herself. Therefore they had wallowed together in cosiness, both suffering, Mark for fear of her leaving him, her for fear (certainty, actually) that the romantic inside her would rise up and smash their deadening familiarity to pieces. ~ Glen Duncan

If the observation were made to you that "Strangers become intimate, and as intimacy grows they lower their guards and less mind their manners until errors are made, which decreases intimacy until estrangement exceeds that which existed before the strangers ever met," would you be inclined to agree? ~ Padgett Powell

And it is true that we are warmed by being called by our names. We all know people who hardly ever do it, who only do it when they absolutely must. They manage to steer conversations along, ask questions, respond, without ever using a first name. And they chill others with their apparent detachment, those others who can never understand that it is diffidence which keeps them from committing themselves to the use of names. They might get the names wrong, or use them too often, be claiming an intimacy to which they have no right, be forward, pushy, presumptuous. ~ Ruth Rendell

Like most music that affects me deeply, I would never listen to it while others were around, just as I would not pass on a book that I especially loved to another. I am embarrassed to admit this, knowing that it reveals some essential lack or selfishness in my nature, and aware that it runs contrary to the instincts of most, whose passion for something leads them to want to share it, to ignite a similar passion in others, and that without the benefit of such enthusiasm I would still be ignorant of many of the books and much of the music I love most ... But rather than an expansion, I've always felt a diminishment of my own pleasure when I've invited someone else to take part in it, a rupture in the intimacy I felt with the work, an invasion of privacy. It is worst when someone else picks up the copy of a book I've just been enthralled by and begins casually to thumb through the pages. ~ Nicole Krauss

Corinne suggested a different reason, indicating that her dying father had expressed concern about Theodore's intimacy with Edith, given Charles Carow's fiscal and temperamental instability. If Theodore discussed the issue with Edith that night, he might well have triggered the volatility that he would obscurely explain to Bamie as a clash of tempers "that were far from being of the best. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

God is a person [in Christ]. A person can be known only by personal understanding, not impersonal understanding. Personal understanding takes place through love, caring, willingness, intimacy, and relationship. ~ Peter Kreeft

A formal period in life where there isn't the worry of another person's dramas and insecurities can be of great advantage, especially when used for growing into the full and wholesome beings we intended to be when choosing to come to this material manifestation.
"Even after ending a long relationship or a marriage, it seems normal to have some alone-time to reflect, meditate, explore areas of interest, find meaning in one's suffering and try to placate the void felt in the heart before attempting to enter into new relationships, otherwise the same old mistakes will surely re-emerge.
"Once we're at the stage of life where we can stand our own silence, where we've made peace with our past, where we've accepted and grown from its lessons, and we would like to share our independence without becoming dependent on someone else for love and affection, then we can choose to commit to a two bodied intimate relationship. ~ Nityananda Das

A woman's power of imitation and adaptation make her capable of confronting you with your own arguments after even the briefest acquaintance: how much more so if a state of intimacy exists. ~ Anthony Powell

To walk out of His will is to walk into nowhere. ~ C.S. Lewis

Their words faded into the darkness as if they were spoken and unspoken at the same time; as if they were important and yet not at all, as if they were two people talking or maybe just one.
Darkness, she understood later, easily confused the meaning of words, of skin touching skin. In their remaining summers together she tried to find that oneness again. When it was all over,
when youth ended and he chose Maisy, she understood the lesson from the dock that night: she could never again call her feelings of intimacy and oneness love. Nor would she be fooled again into believing that her love was returned, that a boy felt more for her than friendship. ~ Patti Callahan Henry

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

If you want to be reminded of the love of the Lord, just watch the sunrise. ~ Jeannette Walls

This human need for mysticism – surrender to an unknown truth, union – stands at the helm of all romantic feeling. It is, in essence, the same intimacy known in a mother's arms; in those who are deprived of the experience, the need freezes and, distorted, it can rent a life. All addiction has as its foundation skewed yearning for the same transcendence. For me, the spell of the material was broken by my brother's death; after his suicide, all I wanted was the renewal of my connection to the intangible. ~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. ... I am not aware of any other factor in medicine - not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery - that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness, and premature death from all causes. ~ Brian L. Weiss

Ice is most welcome in a cold drink on a hot day.
But in the heart of winter, you want a warm hot mug with your favorite soothing brew to keep the chill away.
When you don't have anything warm at hand, even a memory can be a small substitute.
Remember a searing look of intimate eyes.
Receive the inner fire. ~ Vera Nazarian

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

He and Janet talked like this all the time. The Fillorians didn't really get it, they thought High King Eliot and Queen Janet hated each other, but the truth was that in Quentin's absence Janet had become his principal confidante. Eliot supposed it was partly because they both found real romantic intimacy elusive and kind of uninteresting, so usually neither of them had a serious boyfriend, and they had to turn to each other for intelligent companionship. ~ Lev Grossman

Everything we do for God will be the overflow of intimacy with God. ~ Dan Baumann

And within the computer's innards, a spreading cancer. A self-replicating corruption. A B-pop mutiny of bass and drum and oscillating frequency. Inane quasi poetry glorifying a pointless act of intimacy. ~ Jay Kristoff

But in spite of my great desire for intimacy, I've always been a loner. Perhaps when the longing for connection is as strong as it is in me, when the desire is for something so deep and true, one knows better than to try. One sees that this is not the place for that. ~ Elizabeth Berg

Paradoxically, that large screen in the cavernous, crowded
room creates intimacy. And violence is an intimate act. If you
are punching someone, or if you are pinpointing someone in
the telescope of your rifle, you are as close to your victim as to
a lover, trying to think like them, anticipate their moves, overcome
them. ~ D.K. Holm

Our intimacy with God broadens our influence on earth ~ Sunday Adelaja

The Garden of Eden was the place where the first human creatures might have acquired wisdom: Eden was the place for total intimacy with God, and that is the sole condition fur becoming wise. Day by day they might have grown in wisdom and stature, taking those strolls with God in 'the breezy time of day (Genesis 3:8). But they could not wait to get smart, so they chose the quick and dirty method... (pg. 149) ~ Ellen F. Davis

When you view (or think about) porn, a crummy feeling comes over you. It's the feeling of shame, or something like it. Shame changes your self view. It changes who you think you are, how you see yourself. You see yourself as ugly, and an undercurrent of resentment may start boiling up underneath. When you have this kind of self perception, you can't be vulnerable and open to the world. You can't allow yourself to be who you are. You have to keep your true self hidden from the world. You can't have intimacy. Intimacy is key to having a real relationship with anybody. When you view pornography, you destroy the possibility of intimacy with a partner and others, so a real relationship becomes impossible. You retreat out of interdependence with the world and into isolation where you can indulge in your addiction.

Along with the feeling of shame is the annihilation of boundaries. You can't defend yourself emotionally in the world. Words strike your soul while you're reeling from addiction. Everything hits you where it hurts. Minor inquiries by others feel like investigations of you. Your soul can't bear being seen, yet it's exposed entirely. The only recourse in a big, hurtful world, it seems, is to retreat and lick your wounds with the addiction again. ~ Fahad Shah

When your ethnicity is heaven, then all adversity offers the gift of intimacy, driving you into the home of His heart. ~ Ann Voskamp

Dear God, teach me to be careless. ~ Hanif Kureishi

This is a glorious biography ... The time is ripe for a new biography of Edith Wharton of this intimacy and on this scale ... Lee the biographer pursues her subject down every winding corridor, into every hidden passage and dark corner ... Her critical exploration of Edith Whartons work is dazzlingly assured ... A feat of exhaustive research, and finely tuned to Whartons creative achievement at the same time ... [Wharton] could scarcely have failed to be impressed by ... its artistic sympathy, its sonorous depths, and its soaring conception. ~ Mark Bostridge

She (his future wife) was so deep into the Lord's presence that I felt like an outsider. ~ Jeremy Camp

At the heart of mankind's existence is the desire to be intimate and to be loved by another. Marriage is designed to meet that need for intimacy and love. ~ Gary Chapman

Sex isn't hard, but intimacy is terrifying. ~ Tatiana Maslany

Love should be easy. Life is hard. Relationships are complicated. But the love, that's the one thing we should be able to count on. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Worship must be - Christ centered, Holy Spirit led, a Response to the Father, about Intimacy and Service and always lead to Transformation! ~ Tim Hughes

You are a paintbrush in hands of the Artist. ~ Heidi Baker

Sometimes the thing you fear the most in your relationship turns out to be the thing that brings you and your partner to a deeper place of understanding and intimacy. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Contemplating the goodness within ourselves is a classical meditation, done to bring light, joy, and rapture to the mind. In contemporary times this practice might be considered rather embarrassing, because so often the emphasis is on all the unfortunate things we have done, all the disturbing mistakes we have made. Yet this classical reflection is not a way of increasing conceit. It is rather a commitment to our own happiness, seeing our happiness as the basis for intimacy with all of life. It fills us with joy and love for ourselves and a great deal of self-respect. Significantly, when we do metta practice, we begin by directing metta toward ourselves. This is the essential foundation for being able to offer genuine love to others ~ Sharon Salzberg

True intimacy is only build around the freedom to disagree. ~ Henry Cloud

Romance depends upon imperfect knowledge. ~ Harold Bloom

In love relationships, there's such intimacy, and the potential to be the most vulnerable and honest and raw with another person. Why can't we have that transparency with everyone in our lives and reach that higher connection? ~ Rachael Yamagata

Sahara knew she should be worried about the fact that she'd been in bed with a man who'd caused that kind of damage with a momentary and, according to him, minor loss of telekinetic control during intimacy, but she felt her lips kick up at the corners. So we literally made the earth move?
A slight pause, before Kaleb said, I suggest we don't engage in sex in populated areas.
The cool comment made her burst into laughter. ~ Nalini Singh

Intimacy should not be given casually; there should be a price. And it shouldn't be negotiable. ~ Mensah Oteh

In psychologist Robert Sternberg's triangular theory of love, he identifies three characteristics: passion, intimacy, and commitment. Passion is defined as physical attraction and sexual connection, intimacy as the sense of being close and bonded, and commitment as the decision to be together exclusively. As a romantic relationship moves through time, one of these three characteristics is carrying the most weight. Accordingly, although romantic love offers both intimacy and passion/sex, commitment is needed to complete the triangle. ~ Susan Shapiro Barash

He would henceforth worship and defend the very reason for Joy, the Almighty Maker of Joy. ~ Philip Zaleski

Real intimacy depends on truth - lovingly told - especially in the bedroom. ~ Joyce Brothers

With intimacy comes the possibility of "engulfment" or being taken hostage by the demands of others. We may have distorted perceptions of the "demands" and obligations placed upon us by those who claim to love us. Trusting that love to be unconditional is almost impossible for us, and we are always scanning for the unstated "subtext" or hidden "agenda" connected to this love. ~ Mary Crocker Cook

Tell no one your secrets, Daphne's mom always said, but make them think that you have. It creates the illusion of intimacy. ~ Katharine McGee

American life is based on a reassurance that we like one another but won't violate one another's privacies. This makes it a land of small talk. Two people greet each other happily, with friendliness, but might know each other for years before venturing basic questions about each other's backgrounds....In the East, I've heard it said, there's intimacy without friendship; in the West, there's friendship without intimacy. ~ Karan Mahajan

The miraculous intimacy we shared did not have the time to generate into resentful emotional bondage ~ Josephine Hart

The publishers, as I remember at the very beginning of my career, wrote letters with their fountain pens. A letter is different from a phone call or fax. It's a different kind of intimacy. That pervaded the entire business of writing and publishing. ~ James Salter

I was starting to fall for him,
He didn't say it but the way
He looked at me,
Told me he felt the same. ~ Nikki Rowe

With you, intimacy colors my voice. Even 'hello' sounds like 'come here'. ~ Warsan Shire

What I treasure most at any moment is intimacy, surprise, a sense of mystery, wit, depth and love. A handful of cherished friends offer me this, and the occasional singer or film-maker or artist. But my most reliable sources of electricity are Henry David Thoreau, Shakespeare, Melville and Emily Dickinson. ~ Pico Iyer

If I die this instant will you be more content with the morning news? Will your coffee taste better? I am not your fate. I am not your government ... I am not your mother, not your father or your nightmare or your health. I am not a fence, not a wall. I am not the law or actuarial tables of your insurance broker. I am a woman with my guts loose in my hands, howling and it's not because I committed hari-kiri. I suggest either you cook me or sew me back up. I suggest you walk into my pain as into the breaking waves of an ocean of blood, and either we will climb out together and walk away. ~ Marge Piercy

It's refreshing, honestly, to be able to have more intellectual conversations about sex and the meaning of sex, and intimacy and what that means in relationships. As a person in the world, it's on your mind. It's a part of your life, after a certain age until you're dead. So, to be able to examine it in a different way is really fulfilling. ~ Lizzy Caplan

And even though body has entwined with body, vows have been whispered into the lover's ears in the throws of unimaginable passion, there's a pang still. One has not felt understood by the lover. And that is a different quality of loneliness. A constant dull hammering. Like static hum. Dissonance. Ultimately it translates into a plain inability to see the other's view. We shout betrayal. We shift blame. We feel inadequate. When it is plain inability. So their intimacy has a narrow gap running across, like a rift between two continents and it's only when you examine it from above, do you really see it. You realize that the gap could be the breadth of a hairline but it is deep. It's darkness stretches all the way down into a free falling abyss. ~ Sakoon Singh

Absence does not so much make the heart grow fonder as give the heart time to integrate what it has not previously absorbed, time to make sense of what happened too quickly to have any meaning in the instant. This is always true. If it is in absence that people forget each other, it is also in the quiet pause of absence that, minds running in symmetry, people come to know each other; there is sometimes as much intimacy in the span of continents as in the shared hours before dawn. ~ Andrew Solomon

Being on the same level as everybody is really important to me. I'm trying to do really basic stuff like communicate, convey, talk, see, and invite joining and intimacy. What I'm trying to do is attach. It's not about being separate. ~ Sue Tompkins

Solitude with God repairs the damage done by the fret and noise and clamour of the world. ~ Oswald Chambers

Any relationship beyond acquaintanceship is composed of one to three qualities: passion, intimacy, and commitment. Simple friendship has one: intimacy. You can have other friends and you do not feel passionately about one another, or we are dealing with another animal. Most romantic relationships begin with a dollop of passion, often to the exclusion of anything else. The person in your arms is the best in the world, though you barely know him or her. You have never felt this way. Any gaps or deficits are temporarily puttied over by passion. When most people envision romantic love, this is where they stop. Romantic comedies but only rarely deal with washing your lover's dishes because they must be up early for work. No one wants to see the mundane when they can flip the channel to a desperate, emotionally-stunted frottage. The passion of infatuation triggers the release of addictive chemicals. We would rather get another hit than cope with the relative dullness of intimacy and commitment. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Michael's generation - its history of fighting disease and bigotry - sometimes made him grumpier than Ben would like him to be, but he knew what he'd found in Michael: a gift for intimacy like none Ben had ever known. ~ Armistead Maupin

Yet whenever someone comes upon his very own half then they are wondrously struck with affection and intimacy and love, and are practically unwilling to be separated from one another even for a short time. And it is they who stay together for life, and who wouldn't be able to say what they want to get for themselves from one another. ~ Plato

Perhaps these are inward irritations always produced by love: the acutely sensitive nerves of intimacy: the haunting fear that all may not go well. ~ Anthony Powell

Intimacy with God is what determines our exploits ~ Sunday Adelaja

When you find real love - protect and preserve the sweetness and intimacy of your gift. ~ Bryant McGill

Do I want her to know me like this? Do I want her to know that I'm a freak, in the strictest definition of the word? Is this what intimacy entails? Baring your weaknesses to someone who might take advantage, but trusting them not to? ~ J.A. Huss

Whether you are married or have lived with someone for a time, look upon that person and know that, as much as you may love that individual, he or she is not your "better half." Yes, this popular term of this endearment can be a warm, comforting notion that speaks to intimacy and trust. but these people you care about so deeply aren't "half" of you at all. They do not fill in your blanks. You have no blanks. You are whole within yourself. ~ Larry Ackerman

Trust is tough since it involves that quixotic mix of integrity, vulnerability, and intimacy. But trust anyway. ~ Jeffrey Fry

Loneliness makes us more capable of true intimacy if ever better opportunities do come along. We might be isolated for now, but we'll be capable of far closer, more interesting bonds with anyone we do eventually locate. ~ Alain De Botton

There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you - may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn't that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours. ~ Anne Carson

People often overlook the profound intimacy which can be felt by performing the smallest acts for someone they love. Never underestimate the energy that can be felt by simply sharing the same space with your soulmate. It is that electricity between two people that causes time to cease to exist. ~ Leanne R. Clute

As students, we have all known two types of teachers, the pedantic and the inspiring. The former have a definite method and operate according to well-established habits; the latter need neither, because they know the subject through and through, Indeed, we may say that teaching methods, which generate subjective habits, are but poor substitutes for the kind of objective intimacy with the subject matter to be taught, which we call 'habitus ~ Yves Simon

Vault: Learning how to keep confidences, to recognize what's ours to share and what's not. The challenge is to stop using gossip, common enemy intimacy, and oversharing as a way to hotwire connection. ~ Brene Brown

Greed stains our culture, soaks our sensibilities and has replaced grace as a sign of our intimacy with the divine. ~ Jennifer Stone

Yet the need for justifying the wealth and power of great corporations in the eyes of the people has never been greater. Why not hark back to Florence, Venice, Antwerp and Amsterdam? The great corporations could devote wealth and energies to cleaning up, improving and adorning our cities. Each large corporation might adopt a city and vie with other corporations to see whose city shines brightest. In the center of each financial district there should be a large plaza in which periodically poets, singers, storytellers and artists of every sort would compete for rich prizes. The corporations should see it as their duty to spot and encourage talent, and celebrate greatness. There should be social intimacy between the powerful and the creative. ~ Eric Hoffer

Delirious as it can be, sex is only one kind of intimacy, and yet has become the cultural catchment area for all kinds of needs because our understanding of intimacy is so poor. Brutal work schedules, related geographic isolation, and the concomitant fracturing of families has meant that there is little time for intimacy, and even less to teach the necessary skills. But intimacy, the axis of romance, is slow, based on the sharing of a life rather than show. In terms of intimacy, folding laundry together or sharing the feeding of a child can have more impact than the most extravagant bouquet. ~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

The Unavailable Available Pattern." It's where you convince yourself (and others) that you are available for relationship, but you always find a way to stop short. That stopping short can manifest in many ways: choosing unavailable people, looking for excuses to run, focusing on a lover's imperfections rather than their appealing qualities, getting lost in the excitement of ecstatic possibility until the first glimpse of real vulnerability sends you packing. It's the addiction to possibility and the fear of intimacy all rolled into one. ~ Jeff Brown

When our highest priority is to always make ourselves feel good, or to always make our partner feel good, then nobody ends up feeling good. And our relationship falls apart without our even knowing it. Without conflict, there can be no trust. Conflict exists to show us who is there for us unconditionally and who is just there for the benefits. No one trusts a yes-man. If Disappointment Panda were here, he'd tell you that the pain in our relationship is necessary to cement our trust in each other and produce greater intimacy. ~ Mark Manson