Relationships

“When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth.”
― Jess C. Scott, The Intern

“I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Blue-Eyed Devil

“Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“A guy and a girl can be just friends, but at one point or another, they will fall for each other...Maybe temporarily, maybe at the wrong time, maybe too late, or maybe forever”
― Dave Matthews Band

“I mean, if the relationship can't survive the long term, why on earth would it be worth my time and energy for the short term?”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song

“Man may have discovered fire, but women discovered how to play with it.”
― Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City

“I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't coma back. You're left so alone that you can't explain. Damn, there's nothing like that, is there? I've been there and you have too. You're nodding your head.”
― Henry Rollins, The Portable Henry Rollins

“It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.”
― Nick Hornby

“If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.”
― Nicholas Sparks

“I consider conversations with people to be mind exercises, but I don't want to pull a muscle, so I stretch a lot. That's why I'm constantly either rolling my eyes or yawning.”
― Jarod Kintz, It Occurred to Me

“I suffer from girlnextdooritis where the guy is friends with you and that's it.”
― Taylor Swift

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― C.G. Jung

“For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.”
― Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

“I think the key indicator for wealth is not good grades, work ethic, or IQ. I believe it's relationships. Ask yourself two questions: How many people do I know, and how much ransom money could I get for each one?”
― Jarod Kintz

“I want to grow a flower for every time someone tells me “F*** you.” Then I’ll go back to that person and pin the flower on their lapel in a gesture of friendship. And while they are looking down on it in astonishment, I’ll bunch up my knuckles and punch them in the face.”
― Jarod Kintz, I Want Two apply for a job at our country's largest funeral home, and then wear a suit and noose to the job interview.

“Well, it seems to me that the best relationships - the ones that last - are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is... suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.”
― Gillian Anderson

“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?"
"Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever.... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you truly who you are—that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have.”

I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.

Let our scars fall in love.”
― Galway Kinnell

“When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.”
― Tom Robbins

“I can tell if two people are in love by how they hold each other’s hands, and how thick their sanitation gloves are.”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not for Sale

“You know what I like most about people? Pets.
”
― Jarod Kintz, Who Moved My Choose?: An Amazing Way to Deal With Change by Deciding to Let Indecision Into Your Life

“Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can't figure out what from.”
― Mae West

“I will love you always. When this red hair is white, I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age, I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the lines of every smile you have ever smiled, of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes, when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your face,I will treasure you all the more, because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you, Meredith, and I will love you until the last breath leaves your body or mine.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, A Lick of Frost

“Maybe our girlfriends are our soulmates and guys are just people to have fun with.”
― Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City

“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“I used to date the lead singer of The Cranberries, but she cheated on me. Turns out she had some turkey on the side.”
― Jarod Kintz, It Occurred to Me

“He could totally be your boyfriend," [Angel] went on with annoying persistance. "You guys could get married. I could be like a junior bridesmaid. Total could be your flower dog."
"I'm only a kid!" I shrieked. "I can't get married!"
"You could in New Hampshire."
My mouth dropped open. How does she know this stuff? "Forget it! No one's getting married!" I hissed. "Not in New Hampshire or anywhere else! Not in a box, not with a fox! Now go to sleep, before I kill you!”
― James Patterson, Max

“Every couple has ups and downs, every couple argues, and that’s the thing—you’re a couple, and couples can’t function without trust.”
― Nicholas Sparks, At First Sight

“When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Dairy Queen

“He loved her for almost everything she was & she decided that was enough to let him stay for a very long time.”
― Brian Andreas

“Every couple needs to argue now and then. Just to prove that the relationship is strong enough to survive. Long-term relationships, the ones that matter, are all about weathering the peaks and the valleys.”
― Nicholas Sparks, Safe Haven

“Women cannot complain about men anymore until they start getting better taste in them.”
― Bill Maher

“I like my relationships like I like my eggs. Over easy.”
― Jarod Kintz, It Occurred to Me

“I want to be in a relationship where you telling me you love me is just a ceremonious validation of what you already show me.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“Relationships dont always make sense. Especially from the outside”
― Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride

“I’ve been fighting to be who I am all my life. What’s the point of being who I am, if I can’t have the person who was worth all the fighting for?”
― Stephanie Lennox, I Don't Remember You

“A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up.”
― Mae West

“What we wait around a lifetime for with one person, we can find in a moment with someone else.”
― Stephanie Klein, Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir

“If a girl starts out all casual with a guy and she doesn't tell him that she wants a relationship, it will never become a relationship. If you give the guy the impression that casual is okay with you, that's all he'll ever want. Be straight with him from the start. If he gets scared and runs away, he wasn't right for you.”
― Susane Colasanti, Waiting For You

“I was suffering the easily foreseeable consequences. Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never dared to admit you wanted-an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with a hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is witheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy, and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore-- despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free). Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to have 'that thing' even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is,you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess,unrecognizable even to your own eyes. So that's it. You have now reached infatuation's final destination-- the complete and merciless devaluation of self." - pg 20-21”
― Elizabeth Gilbert

“Don't leave a piece of jewelry at his house so you can go back and get it later; he may be with his real girlfriend.”
― Amy Sedaris, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“It's probably a bad indicator of your lifestyle when you miss your ex-boyfriend because he's absolutely lethal.”
― Charlaine Harris, Dead to the World

“You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn't like a light switch, easy to turn on or off. If you were in, you were in. Out, you were out.”
― Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride

“You remember when we were sitting there by the water you put your arm around me for the first time you made a rebel of a careless man’ s careful daughter you are the best thing that’s ever been mine”
― Taylor Swift

“you can take this mouth
this wound you want
but you can't kiss
and make it
better.”
― Daphne Gottlieb, Why Things Burn

“For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“Love is like a door knob that I’ve mistaken for a shower handle, and I’m trying to turn up the heat on our relationship, but the handle won’t turn and I’ve got shampoo in my eyes and my wetsuit is dry and I started crying just as the zookeeper asked me to leave. 
”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book Has No Title

“A fit, healthy body—that is the best fashion statement”
― Jess C. Scott

“And then the line was quite but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”
― Stephen R. Covey

“When God knows you're ready for the responsibility of commitment, He'll reveal the right person under the right circumstances.”
― Joshua Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye: A New Attitude Toward Relationships and Romance

“I’m older now than my dad was when he was my age. Wait, that’s not right. That’s not my dad at all, that’s just some stranger hanging around in my memory.
”
― Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks

“I just...I just miss him. And I hate being so alone.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“Why don’t we break up? I guess I stay with her because she stays with me. And that’s not an easy thing to do.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“It's not your job to like me - it's mine”
― Byron Katie

“No matter how close we are to another person, few human relationships are as free from strife, disagreement, and frustration as is the relationship you have with a good dog. Few human beings give of themselves to another as a dog gives of itself. I also suspect that we cherish dogs because their unblemished souls make us wish - consciously or unconsciously - that we were as innocent as they are, and make us yearn for a place where innocence is universal and where the meanness, the betrayals, and the cruelties of this world are unknown.”
― Dean Koontz, A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog

“Every now and then, I’d meet a guy and think that we were getting along great, and suddenly I’d stop hearing from him. Not only did he stop calling, but if I happened to bump into him sometime later he always acted like I had the plague. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. And it bothered me. It hurt me. With time, it got harder and harder to keep blaming the guys, and I eventually came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with me. That maybe I was simply meant to live my life alone.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Lucky One

“When what you hear and what you see don't match, trust your eyes.”
― Dale Renton

“I believe with all my heart that the cliches are true, that we are our own best friends and best company, and that if you're not right for yourself, it's impossible to be right for anyone.”
― Rachel Machacek, The Science of Single: One Woman's Grand Experiment in Modern Dating, Creating Chemistry, and Finding Love

“Share too much and someone can hurt you.”
― Dorothy Koomson, My Best Friend's Girl

“I used to think I knew everything. I was a "smart person" who "got things done," and because of that, the higher I climbed, the more I could look down and scoff at what seemed silly or simple, even religion.
But I realized something as I drove home that night: that I am neither better nor smarter, only luckier. And I should be ashamed of thinking I knew everything, because you can know the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-no matter how smart or accomplished-they cry, they yearn, they hurt.But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things:comfort, love, and a peaceful heart.”
― Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: The Story of a Last Request

“Love has no limitations. It cannot be measured. It has no boundaries. Although many have tried, love is indefinable.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“It seems to me if you add music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can't afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product. You've got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you've got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you're compelled to start all over again. Maybe we live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Love is a commitment that will be tested in the most vulnerable areas of spirituality, a commitment that will force you to make some very difficult choices. It is a commitment that demands that you deal with your lust, your greed, your pride, your power, your desire to control, your temper, your patience, and every area of temptation that the Bible clearly talks about. It demands the quality of commitment that Jesus demonstrates in His relationship to us.”
― Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love

“Please, touch me, I pray.”
― Jess C. Scott, The Intern

“Love doesn't mean anything if you're not willing to make a commitment, and you have to think not only about what you want, but about what he wants. Not just now, but in the future.”
― Nicholas Sparks, Safe Haven

“I wonder how you keep warm. It's too late to cry, too broken to move on.

Still I can't let you be, most nights I hardly sleep. Don't take what you don't need, from me.”
― Ron Pope

“I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do — to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited and harmful image of people. It thus impedes a broader social acceptance of what someone, or a group of people, might actually be like.”
― Jess C. Scott, New Order

“You want to take me to a movie?" I asked.
"Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

“The words ‘I Love You’ kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.”
― Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love

“What a relationship looks like on the outside isn't the same as what it's like on the inside. You can be more in love with someone in your mind than with the person you see every day.”
― Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation

“Mutual caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain.”
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

“If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”
― W.H. Auden

“The end of a relationship is not always a failure. Sometimes all the love in the world is not enough to save something. In these cases, it is not a matter of fault from either person. Some things cannot be, it's as simple as that.”
― Ashly Lorenzana

“Sometimes the one who is running from the Life/Death/Life nature insists on thinking of love as a boon only. Yet love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back. Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

“A beautiful thing happens when we start paying attention to each other. It is by participating more in your relationship that you breathe life into it.”
― Steve Maraboli

“Either you go to America with Mrs. Van Hopper or you come home to Manderley with me."
"Do you mean you want a secretary or something?"
"No, I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Because introverts are typically good listeners and, at least, have the appearance of calmness, we are attractive to emotionally needy people. Introverts, gratified that other people are initiating with them, can easily get caught in these exhausting and unsatisfying relationships.”
― Adam S. McHugh

“Tell me whom you haunt and I’ll tell you who you are.”
― André Breton

“Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity...When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Like a chemical mixture, if one of us is changed, both of us will be. Will we grow in self-actualization, or will it destroy us? The one thing we can be certain of is that if we let ourselves fully into the relationship for good or evil, we will not come out unaffected.”
― Rollo May, The Courage to Create

“Funny how we take it for granted that we know all there is to know about another person, just because we see them frequently or because of some strong emotional tie.”
― Robert Bloch, Psycho

“So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it.”
― W. Paul Young, The Shack

“Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?'

The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.

Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.'

Didn't you mean them?'

At the moment.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“If you're trapped in the dream of the Other, you're fucked.”
― Gilles Deleuze

“He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

“People are islands,' she said. 'They don't really touch. However close they are, they're really quite separate. Even if they've been married for fifty years.”
― Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

“What is it about men that make women so lonely?”
― Elliot Perlman

“Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“You don't fix a man the way you do a fault in a pipe or a leak in a roof. You take him as he is, Mary Brenna, or you don't take him at all...adjustments can't be all made on one side, darling, else the balance goes off and what's being built just falls down.”
― Nora Roberts, Tears of the Moon

“After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them---not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two

“She knew that what she was going through was nothing special, just garden-variety heartbreak, the sort of thing that poets and novelists had been writing about for hundreds of years, but she also knew, from those same books, that there were people who never recover form it, ones who go on through life beset by a dim and painful longing.”
― Sarah Dunn

“I was trying to decide if you still had free will as a wolf. If I was a terrible person for planning to drug my girlfriend and drag her back to my house to keep in the basement.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Forever

“You cold or something?' he said. She strained against him; she wanted to pass clear through him: 'It's a chill, it's nothing'; and then, pushing a little away: 'Say you love me.'

I said it.'

No, oh no. You haven't. I was listening. And you never do.'

Well, give me time.'

Please.'

He sat up and glanced at a clock across the room. It was after five. Then decisively he pulled off his windbreaker and began to unlace his shoes.

Aren't you going to, Clyde?'

He grinned back at her. 'Yeah, I'm going to.'

I don't mean that; and what's more, I don't like it: you sound as though you were talking to a whore.'

Come off it, honey. You didn't drag me up here to tell you about love.'

You disgust me,' she said.

Listen to her! She's sore!'

A silence followed that circulated like an aggrieved bird. Clyde said, 'You want to hit me, huh? I kind of like you when you're sore: that's the kind of girl you are,' which made Grady light in his arms when he lifted and kissed her. 'You still want me to say it?' Her head slumped on his shoulder. 'Because I will,' he said, fooling his fingers in her hair. 'Take off your clothes--and I'll tell it to you good.”
― Truman Capote, Summer Crossing

“You will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water...”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Relationships are mysterious. We doubt the positive qualities in others, seldom the negative. You will say to your partner: do you really love me? Are you sure you love me? You will ask this a dozen times and drive the person nuts. But you never ask: are you really mad at me? Are you sure you’re angry? When someone is angry, you don’t doubt it for a moment. Yet the reverse should be true. We should doubt the negative in life, and have faith in the positive.”
― Christopher Pike, Remember Me

“Lots of things can be fixed. Things can be fixed. But many times, relationships between people cannot be fixed, because they should not be fixed. You're aboard a ship setting sail, and the other person has joined the inland circus, or is boarding a different ship, and you just can't be with each other anymore. Because you shouldn't be.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“All I'm telling you to do is to be smart about it. Know that if this man isn't looking for a serious relationship, you're not going to change his mind just because you two are going on dates and being intimate. You could be the most perfect woman on the Lord's green earth-you're capable of interesting conversation, you cook a mean breakfast, you hand out backrubs like sandwiches, you're independent (which means, to him, that you're not going to be in his pockets)-but if he's not ready for a serious relationship, he going to treat you like sports fish.”
― Steve Harvey, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment

“My grandpa died yesterday. I ought to know, because I shot him. So come, join me in the fight against patricide by killing your father’s father.
”
― Jarod Kintz, The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They're Over.

“I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.”
― Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters

“I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Moving on is easy. It's staying moved on that's trickier.”
― Katerina Stoykova Klemer

“Don't worry about hurting me, if that's what you're afraid of. I want to get hurt. At least I´ll feel something for a change.”
― Katie Kacvinsky, Awaken

“When you hold a grudge, you want someone else’s sorrow to reflect your level of hurt but the two rarely meet.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved.”
― W. Paul Young

“We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.”
― Cornel West, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life

“Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.”
― Meghan O'Rourke

“I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

“Can officially confirm that the way to a man's heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary

“I may not always be with you
But when we're far apart
Remember you will be with me
Right inside my heart”
― Marc Wambolt, Poems from the Heart

“Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth... This is the real message of love.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Teachings on Love

“I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.”
― W. Paul Young, The Shack

“I felt like an animal, and animals don’t know sin, do they?”
― Jess C. Scott, Wicked Lovely

“Right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“Your absence has not taught me to be alone, it merely has shown that when together we cast a single shadow on the wall.”
― Doug Fetherling

“If you're right & I'm not, I'm going to be hell to live with, she said. So, you better think about that next time you want to be right. ”
― Brian Andreas

“I once loved a girl who almost loved me, but not as much as she loved John Cusack.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

“Last night I was seriously considering whether I was a bisexual or not but I don’t think so though I’m not sure if I’d like to be and argh I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, if you like a person, you like the person, not their genitals.”
― Jess C. Scott, Tongue-Tied

“Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are -- chaff and grain together -- certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.”
― Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, A Life for a Life

“How would your life be different if…You walked away from gossip and verbal defamation? Let today be the day…You speak only the good you know of other people and encourage others to do the same.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“What you want most you push away from you.
You want more than you care to admit.”
― Tarjei Vesaas, The Bridges

“An unarticulated crush is very different from an unrequited one, because at least with an unrequited crush you know what the hell you're doing, even if the other person isn't doing it back. An unarticulated crush is harder to grapple with, because it's a crush that you haven't even admitted to yourself. The romantic forces are all there -- you want to see him, you always notice him, you treat every word from him as if it weighs more than anyone else's. But you don't know why. You don't know that you're doing it. You'd follow him to the end of the earth without ever admitting that your feet were moving.”
― David Levithan, Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd

“Some people come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never ever the same.”
― Flavia Weedn

“Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“They lay silently. She was staring at something across the room. She was making him feel uncomfortable. 'It wouldn't work. It's the attraction of opposites,' he said.

We're not opposites.'

I don't mean just you and me. Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave.”
― James Salter

“Physical love is unthinkable without violence.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“But it is impossible to go through life without trust; that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.”
― Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear: An Entertainment

“Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect.”
― W. Paul Young, The Shack

“Caring about someone isn't complicated. It isn't easy. But it isn't complicated, either. Kinda like lifting the engine block out of a car.”
― Jim Butcher, Small Favor

“If a man can possess a woman sexually -really possess- he won't need to control her ideas, her opinions, her clothes, her friends, even her other lovers.”
― Toni Bentley

“There are so many things that demand to be said. Where did you go? Do you ever think about me? You`ve ruined me. Are you okay? But of course, I can`t say any of that.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“My head’ll explode if I continue with this escapism.”
― Jess C. Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education

“All I want from you is to trust me with what little you can, and grow in loving people around you with the same love I share with you. It's not your job to change them, or to convince them. You are free to love without an agenda.”
― W. Paul Young, The Shack

“Lately I can't help wanting us
to be like other people.
For example, if I were a smoker,

you'd lift a match to the cigarette
just as I put it between my lips.
It's never been like that

between us: none of that
easy chemistry, no quick, half automatic
flares. Everything between us

had to be learned.
Saturday finds me brooding
behind my book, all my fantasies

of seduction run up
against the rocks.
Tell me again

why you don't like
sex in the afternoon?
No, don't tell me--

I'll never understand you
never understand us, America's strangest
loving couple: they never

drink a bottle of wine together
and rarely look at each other.
Into each other's eyes, I mean.”
― Deborah Garrison, A Working Girl Can't Win

“I hope we'll be friends forever, together we'll always be. I don't think you understand just how much you mean to me. And one day when we part our ways, we'll think back to the past and think about how happy we are 'cause our friendship will always last.”
― Bridget Davis

“Her face looked ugly in the attempt to avoid tears; it was an ugliness which bound him to her more than any beauty could have done. It isn't being happy together, he thought as though it were a fresh discovery, that makes one love--it's being unhappy together.”
― Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear: An Entertainment

“The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Theresa, I know there's a part of you that believes you can change someone, but the reality is that you can't. You can change yourself, and Garrett can change himself, but you can't do it for him.”
― Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle

“So i learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs Of Cleopatra

“Words were weapons, his father had taught him that, and he'd wanted to hurt Clary more than he'd ever wanted to hurt any girl. In fact, he wasn't sure he had ever wanted to hurt a girl before. Usually he just wanted them, and then he wanted them to leave him alone.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

“A friend is someone whose face you can see in the dark.”
― Frances O'Roark Dowell, The Secret Language of Girls

“I’m very close to my dad. He’s about six inches away right now and snoring in my ears.”
― Jarod Kintz, $3.33

“I've often wondered what makes a relationship last. I guess the best answer is it's the one right after the next to the last one.”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not for Sale

“More people are leaving TV behind to read my books than ever before. In the last year alone I gained over two readers (three, to be exact). So I’d like to take a moment and say thanks mom, dad, and kidnap victim I keep chained in the basement. 
”
― Jarod Kintz, The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They're Over.

“Come sleep with me: We won't make Love,Love will make us.”
― Julio Cortázar

“Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?”
― Mary Manin Morrissey

“I care," he said in a trembling voice. "I care so much that I do not know how to tell you without it seeming inconsequential compared to how I feel. Even if I am distant at times and seem as if I do not want to be with you, it is only because this scares me, too.”
― Aimee Carter, The Goddess Test

“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”
― Henry Winkler

“Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“Disappointment has a name, it's heartbreak”
― John Mayer

“Maybe it’s like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And then things happen - these people leave us, or don’t love us, or don’t get us, or we don’t get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack in places. And I mean, yeah once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. Once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled. But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And its only that time that we see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade, but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“Those sweet lips. My, oh my, I could kiss those lips all night long.

Good things come to those who wait.”
― Jess C. Scott, The Intern

“Cheating and lying aren't struggles, they're reasons to break up.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, Between The Tides

“How’s my mom? My mother’s well, like a painting—a Motherwell.
”
― Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks

“There is greatness in doing something you hate for the sake of someone you love.”
― Shmuley Boteach

“I know my heart will never be the same
But I'm telling myself I'll be okay”
― Sara Evans

“I want a 100% kind of relationship, and I’m willing to give it 50%.
”
― Jarod Kintz, At even one penny, this book would be overpriced. In fact, free is too expensive, because you'd still waste time by reading it.

“You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“I don't want to be your other half. I believe that one and one make two.”
― Alanis Morissette, Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill

“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“He knew one of the women well, and had shared his universe with her. They had seen the same mountains, and the same trees, although each of them had seem them differently. She knew his weaknesses, his moments of hatred, of despair. Yet she was there at his side. They shared the same universe.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Valkyries

“We kiss all the time." I clear my throat, then add, "We just...do it in private."
"A smug expression crosses his face. "I don't buy it for a second, 'cause if you were my girlfriend and a stud like me was livin' in your house, I'd kiss you in front of the guy every chance I got as a reminder."
"A reminder of w-w-what?"
"That you were mine.”
― Simone Elkeles, Rules of Attraction

“Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“Statistically speaking, there is a 65 percent chance that the love of your life is having an affair. Be very suspicious.”
― Scott Dikkers, You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day

“Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who'll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you're in the wrong house, that's what it means.”
― Henny Youngman

“Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often in their adult relationships these men act out again and again to test their partner's love. While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother's love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment. This drama confirms for many men that they cannot put their trust in love. They decide that it is better to put their faith in being powerful, in being dominant.”
― bell hooks

“I have two friends, Steve and Martin. But I'd happily replace both for the friendship of Steve Martin.”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not for Sale

“If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“he wasn't the type for displays of affection, either verbal or not. He was disgusted by couples that made out in the hallways between classes, and got annoyed at even the slightest sapppy moments in movies. But I knew he cared about me: he just conveyed it more subtly, as concise with expressing this emotion as he was with everything else. It was in the way he'd put his hand on the small of my back, for instance, or how he'd smile at me when I said something that surprised him. Once I might have wanted more, but I'd come around to his way of thinking in the time we'd been together. And we were together, all the time. So he didn't have to prove how he felt about me. Like so much else, I should just know.”
― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

“I was praying that you and me might end up together. It's like wishing for rain as I stand in the desert, but I'm holding you closer than most,'cause you are my heaven.”
― Ron Pope

“I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.”
― Lorrie Moore, Like Life

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.

I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“nothing in this world was more difficult than love.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

“Hugh and I have been together for so long that in order to arouse extraordinary passion, we need to engage in physical combat. Once, he hit me on the back of the head with a broken wineglass, and I fell to the floor pretending to be unconscious. That was romantic, or would have been had he rushed to my side rather than stepping over my body to fetch the dustpan.”
― David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

“Forgive the past. It is over. Learn from it and let go. People are constantly changing and growing. Do not cling to a limited, disconnected, negative image of a person in the past. See that person now. Your relationship is always alive and changing.”
― Brian L. Weiss, Messages from the Masters: Tapping Into the Power of Love

“Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.”
― Marian Keyes, Watermelon

“only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“You Can't Lose Something You Never Had”
― Kate Hudson

“When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.
”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“You know someone's right for you when the things they don't have to say are even more important than the things they do.”
― Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home

“Wanting him to come back before anyone notices part of the world has not moved since he left.”
― Brian Andreas

“I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back.”
― Zsa Zsa Gabor

“You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye”
― Margaret Atwood

“The best you can hope for in a relationship is to find
someone whose flaws are the sort you don’t mind. It is
futile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someone
who is capable of significant change; that sort of person
exists only in our imaginations.”
― Scott Adams, God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“V-Day…if you need this one day in a year to show everyone else you truly care for “your loved one” I think it’s quite stupid. I hate this commercialism. It’s all artificial, and has nothing to do with real love.”
― Jess C. Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel

“How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“But whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one for this (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm going to blame John Cusack.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

“Part of the problem with the word 'disabilities' is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can't feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren't able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.”
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.”
― David Richo

“I want to go to Martha’s Vineyard. I have an aunt named Martha. And an uncle by that name. Neither one is related to me. 
”
― Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks

“We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everyhwere.”
― Tim McGraw

“That's when I finally got it. I finally understood. It wasn't the thought that counted. It was the actual execution that mattered, the showing up for somebody. The intent behind it wasn't enough. Not for me. Not anymore. It wasn't enough to know that deep down, he loved me. You had to actually say it to somebody, show them you cared. And he just didn't. Not enough.”
― Jenny Han, It's Not Summer Without You

“The best relationships in our lives are the best not because they have been the happiest ones, they are that way because they have stayed strong through the most tormentful of storms.”
― Pandora Poikilos, Excuse Me, My Brains Have Stepped Out

“I won't telephone him. I'll never telephone him again as long as I live. He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it myself. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows where I am. He knows I'm waiting here. He's so sure of me, so sure. I wonder why they hate you, as soon as they are sure of you.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“Oh, you know. Jace reminds me of an old boyfriend. Some guys look at you like they want sex. Jace looks at you like you've already had sex, it was great, and now you're just friends--even though you want more. Drives girls crazy. You know what I mean?"
Yes, Clary thought. "No," she said.

pg. 280”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes

“Someone real," I hear myself saying. "Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who's smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to a symphony and start to cry, because he understands music can be too big for words. Someone who knows me better than I know myself. Someone I want to talk to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone I feel like I've known my whole life, even if I haven't.”
― Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home

“Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Love.
Not the kind you see in the movies or hear about on the radio.
The real kind.
The kind that gets beaten down and bloody, yet perseveres.
The kind that hopes even when hope seems foolish.
The kind that can forgives. The kind that believes in healing.
The kind that can sit in silence and feel renewed.
The real kind of love.
It's rare and we have it..”
― Chelsea Fine, Sophie & Carter

“Be sure it's your real self you're showing. Because it is your real self that needs to be loved.”
― Daphne Rose Kingma, Finding True Love: The 4 Essential Keys to Bring You the Love of Your Life

“And for that one moment of freedom you have to listen to all that love crap... it drive me nuts sometimes... I want to kick them out immediately... I do now and then. But that doesn't keep them away. They like it, in fact. The less you notice them the more they chase after you. There's something perverse about women... they're all masochists at heart.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Perfectly Imperfect

We have all heard that no two snowflakes are alike. Each snowflake takes the perfect form for the maximum efficiency and effectiveness for its journey. And while the universal force of gravity gives them a shared destination, the expansive space in the air gives each snowflake the opportunity to take their own path. They are on the same journey, but each takes a different path.
Along this gravity-driven journey, some snowflakes collide and damage each other, some collide and join together, some are influenced by wind... there are so many transitions and changes that take place along the journey of the snowflake. But, no matter what the transition, the snowflake always finds itself perfectly shaped for its journey.
I find parallels in nature to be a beautiful reflection of grand orchestration. One of these parallels is of snowflakes and us. We, too, are all headed in the same direction. We are being driven by a universal force to the same destination. We are all individuals taking different journeys and along our journey, we sometimes bump into each other, we cross paths, we become altered... we take different physical forms. But at all times we too are 100% perfectly imperfect. At every given moment we are absolutely perfect for what is required for our journey. I’m not perfect for your journey and you’re not perfect for my journey, but I’m perfect for my journey and you’re perfect for your journey. We’re heading to the same place, we’re taking different routes, but we’re both exactly perfect the way we are.
Think of what understanding this great orchestration could mean for relationships. Imagine interacting with others knowing that they too each share this parallel with the snowflake. Like you, they are headed to the same place and no matter what they may appear like to you, they have taken the perfect form for their journey. How strong our relationships would be if we could see and respect that we are all perfectly imperfect for our journey.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“Most men claim to desire driven, independent and confident women. Yet when confronted with such a creature reverence often evolves into resent. For just like women, men need to be needed.”
― Tiffany Madison

“It's just the most amazing thing to love a dog, isn't it? It makes our relationships with people seem as boring as a bowl of oatmeal.”
― John Grogan, Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog

“He knew me in all the ways that truly mattered: the shape of my fears, the contours of my dreams.”
― Justina Chen Headley

“But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

“Maybe you could be mine / or maybe we’ll be entwined / aimless in this sexless foreplay.”
― Jess C. Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel

“Over time, any deception destroys intimacy, and without intimacy couples cannot have true and lasting love.”
― Bonnie Eaker Weil, Financial Infidelity: Seven Steps to Conquering the #1 Relationship Wrecker

“Thought I couldn't live without you
It's gonna hurt when it heals too
Even though I really love you
I'm gonna smile cause I deserve to
Quickly I'm learning to love again
All I know is I'mma be ok”
― Leona Lewis

“misgivings, n.

last night, I got up the courage to ask you if you regretted us.
"There are things I miss," you said. "But if I didn't have you, I'd miss more.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“...the opposite of love is not hate -- it's apathy. It's not giving a damn. If somebody hates me, they must "feel" something ... or they couldn't possibly hate. Therefore, there's some way in which I can get to them.”
― Leo F. Buscaglia

“You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“Have you ever noticed how parents can go from the most wonderful people in the world to totally embarrassing in three seconds?”
― Rick Riordan, The Red Pyramid

“We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.”
― Albert Einstein

“Why does anyone stay in an unhappy relationship? Because people do. They do it all the time. And the truth is, when you’re in it, when you’re up to your neck in the everyday part of life with another human being, sometimes you don’t exactly notice how bad things really are. It’s not always as apparent as it would seem. Unhappiness, when it involves another person, can be like that line from The Sun Also Rises about going bankrupt, how it happens two ways: gradually, and then suddenly.”
― Sarah Dunn

“I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That this is the only way to grow together, instead of apart.”
― Emily Giffin, Heart of the Matter

“I'm tired of waiting by the phone, and second-guessing what a guy says and trusting someone not to hurt me. Again. I've been storming the relationship castle for fifteen years, and I still don't have my prince. I've got a bunch of battle scars from the field and I want to go home and nurse my wounds. I don't want to fight anymore.”
― Kim Gruenenfelder, A Total Waste of Makeup

“Mocking a woman is like drinking too much wine. It may be fun for a short time, but the hangover is hell.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker

“This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive.
Love is not possessive.
Love is not anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own ideas.
Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage.
Love is not touchy.
Love does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.
Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that stands when all else has fallen.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman

“Men are jealous of every woman, even when they don’t have the slightest interest in her themselves.”
― Jan Neruda, Prague Tales

“I know you haven't made your mind up yet
But I would never do you wrong I've known it from the moment that we met
No doubt in my mind where you belong”
― Adele

“Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.”
― Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves

“The most important relationship in your life is the relationship you have with yourself. Because no matter what happens, you will always be with yourself.”
― Diane Von Furstenberg

“Siblings: children of the same parents, each of whom is perfectly normal until they get together.”
― Sam Levenson

“Contiguous, adj.

I felt silly for even mentioning it, but once I did, I knew I had to explain.
"When I was a kid, "I had this puzzle with all fifty states on it--you know, the kind where you have to fit them all together. And one day I got it in my head that California and Nevada were in love. I told my mom, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I ran and got those two pieces and showed it to her--California and Nevada, completely in love. So a lot of the time when we're like this"--my ankles against the backs of your ankles, my knees fitting into the backs of your knees, my thighs on the backs of your legs, my stomach against your back, my chin folding into your neck--"I can't help but think about California and Nevada, and how we're a lot like them. If someone were drawing us from above as a map. that's what we'd look like; that's how we are." For a moment, you were quiet. And then you nestled in and whispered. "Contiguous." And I knew you understood.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“I used to think--and given the way we ended up, maybe I still do--that all relationships need the kind of violent shove that a crush brings, just to get you started and to push you over the humps. And then, when the energy from that shove has gone and you come to something approaching a halt, you have to look around and see what you've got. It could be something completely different, it could be something roughly the same, but gentler and calmer, or it could be nothing at all.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.”
― Albert Camus

“When forever becomes a place...when forever ceases to be just a word… when it ceases to be a just a measurement of time…but instead becomes a place where soul mates can dance to the song in their hearts, that is a reflection of true love.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the
loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us - that's
snatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completely
changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to
play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the
end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off
behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday.
Leaving behind a feeling of insurmountable emptiness...
Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost.
Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can
disappear, melting together in a single, overlapping figure. And as
we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads
attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to
bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them
closer, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their lives
are fleeting.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“How would your life be different if…You approached all relationships with authenticity and honesty? Let today be the day…You dedicate yourself to building relationships on the solid foundation of truth and authenticity.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“When you say "I" and "my" too much, you lose the capacity to understand the "we" and "our".”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“The desire to love someone always exceeds the desire to be loved by someone & that's exactly why we end up loving the person who doesn't deserve that LOVE.”
― Anirban Bose, Bombay Rains, Bombay Girls

“Love lasts about seven years. That's how long it takes for the cells of the body to totally replace themselves.”
― Françoise Sagan

“You'll blow up a helicopter, but you won't go out with me? What is wrong with you?”
― Meg Cabot, When Lightning Strikes

“Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship.”
― W. Paul Young, The Shack

“Don't answer the door in a wedding dress and veil, he might not think you're joking.”
― Amy Sedaris, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

“This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?"

"I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?"

"Yes," she said.

"That's influenza," said Miro. "Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours.”
― Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind