Intimacies Quotes & Sayings

In the weeks that followed, we amazed ourselves. Our habits slid apart easily ... And our very few intimacies were simply discontinued. Where did they go, those things we did? Were they recycled? Did some new couple in China do them? Were a Swedish man and woman foot to foot at this very moment? — Miranda July

Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies ... and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia. — William James

There were only certain intimacies one could hope to survive. — Damon Galgut

I thought about the times we'd had in his small garret above Greville's darkroom. And I didn't feel anything. It's strange how strong emotions can be so easily diminished as your life continues; how deepest intimacies become commonplace half-recalled memories-- such as an exotic holiday you once went on, or a cocktail party where you drank far too much, or winning a race at the school sports day. Nothing stirs anymore. — William Boyd

carried the full knowledge of how a man and a woman fit together. The plunge of his tongue into her mouth, her yielding softness - all this was part of the dance, a promise of deeper intimacies. She pressed herself closer to him, yearning spiraling out from her center. Nicholas — Anthea Lawson

Steps can then be taken to slow down the natural progression before it gets started. It doesn't work to allow all the preliminary intimacies and then hope to stop the progression just short of intercourse. Very few people have the willpower to do that. — James C. Dobson

In terms of theatrics and mind-boggling intimacies, the subway cannot be beat - people you see every day and smile at, people who subtly protect each other just by shifting how they're standing, people who compliment each other's outfits, ask where they bought them and for how much. I've seen people meet-cute, make out, and break — Isaac Oliver

For many intelligences,the thought of homely intimacies is associated with a spontaneous disgust at too much sweetness-which is why there is neither a philosophy of sweetness nor an elaborated ontology of the intimate. One must assess the nature of this resistance if one is to get past typical initial aversions. From a distance,the subject appears so unattractive and inconsequential that for the time being,only suckers for harmony or theophilic eunuchs would get stuck on it. An intellect that spends its energy on worthy objects usually prefers the sharp to the sweet; one does not offer candy to heroes — Peter Sloterdijk

The calcium in collarbones I have kissed. The iron in the blood flushing those cheeks. We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A shimmer of photons bears the memory across the long dark amnesia. We will be carried too, mysterious particles that we are. — Anthony Marra

Cinema's characteristic forte is its ability to capture and communicate the intimacies of the human mind. — Satyajit Ray

What I would love to see is art that explicitly addresses not personal intimacies but anonymous intimacies: the vast collections of facts about you and me that now exist in giant server banks. — Russell Smith

We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A — Anthony Marra

The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions. This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters. meetings, introductions, which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us. The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision. — Anais Nin

There is something about the burning of all those letters that gives me pause: why should everything be made clear and be brought into the light? Why keep things, archive your intimacies? Why not let thirty years of shared conversation go spiralling in ash up into the air of Tunbridge Wells? Just because you have it does not mean you have to pass it on. Losing things can sometimes gain you a space in which to live. — Edmund De Waal

These silent intimacies made their marriage, not the ceremonies or parties or opening nights or occasions or spectacular fucks. — Lauren Groff

He hadn't wooed her, but had simply claimed her. A gold mine ready to dig. There should have been a period of quiet dinners together, of flowers rather than diamonds, of kisses given after permission to kiss, of a slow awakening that predisposed her to greater intimacies. But no, not the great Alexander Kinross! He had met her, he had married her the next day, and climbed into her bed after one kiss in the church. There to prove himself an animal in her eyes. One mistake after another, that was the story of his relationship with Elizabeth. And Ruby had always meant more. — Colleen McCullough

There grew between him and Ella a conspiracy of experience, as if the raising of children, the industry of supporting each other in ways practical and tender, and the sum of years and then decades of private conversations and small intimacies - the odour of each other on waking; the trembling sound of each other's breathing when a child was unwell; the illnesses, the griefs and cares, the tendernesses, unexpected and unbidden - as if all this were somehow more binding, more important and more undeniable than love, whatever love was. — Richard Flanagan

Women become attached to men by the intimacies they grant them; men are cured of their love by the same intimacies. — Jean De La Bruyere

His eyes flared dangerously. Did the lass think to share such intimacies with him and then rescind them? Och, nay, Dageus MacKeltar didn't go backward. She would find that out soon enough. — Karen Marie Moning

Four of the roses were on fire.
They stood up straight and pure on the stalk, gripping the dark like prophets
and howling colossal intimacies
from the back of their fused throats.
- XXVII. MITWELT — Anne Carson

All intimacies are based on differences. — Henry James

Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together. — William Shenstone

Rome, like Washington, is small enough, quiet enough, for strong personal intimacies; Rome, like Washington, has its democratic court and its entourage of diplomatic circle; Rome, like Washington, gives you plenty of time and plenty of sunlight. In New York we have annihilated both. — M. E. W. Sherwood

Audrey nodded warily. She had never cared for conspiratorial female conversation of this sort. Its assumption of shared preoccupations was usually unfounded in her experience, its intimacies almost always the trapdoor to some subterranean hostility. — Zoe Heller

Shy and proud men are more liable than any others to fall into the hands of parasites and creatures of low character. For in the intimacies which are formed by shy men, they do not choose, but are chosen. — Henry Taylor

If you enjoy being with somebody, you would like to enjoy it more and more. If you enjoy the intimacy, you would like to explore the intimacy more and more. And there are a few flowers of love that bloom only after long intimacies. There are seasonal flowers, too; within six weeks they are there, in the sun, but within six weeks again they are gone forever. There are flowers that take years to come, and there are flowers that take many years to come. The longer it takes, the deeper it goes. But it has to be a commitment from one heart to another heart. It has not even to be verbalized, because to verbalize it is to profane it. It has to be a silent commitment; eye to eye, heart to heart, being to being. It has to be understood, not said. Forget relationships and learn how to relate. Once — Osho

Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves? — Ford Madox Ford

The problem with reality TV is that creative writers are not involved; TV folks are, and some journalists who will only mine the surface of subjects. Hard work necessary for discovering and delineating the intimacies of the subjects they capture is mostly avoided. — Lee Gutkind

He always forgot; he was always made to remember. He wished, as he often did, that the entire sequence - the divulging of intimacies, the exploring of pasts - could be sped past, and that he could simply be teleported to the next stage, where the relationship was something soft and pliable and comfortable, where both parties' limits were understood and respected. — Hanya Yanagihara

Even if the carriage lamps are repaired," Lord Ravenswood said, "it's not safe for you to leave tonight. And a few hours won't make much difference to your investigation."
"I told him that," said Tristian, "but my fool of a brother is obsessed with avoiding Miss Vernon's questions, and he thinks he can only manage that by staying ahead of our party."
"Ah," the viscount said.
Jane dug her fingers into her palms. After their intimacies last night, she'd thought they might have some chance together, but he only shared his body with her. Everything else he kept secret.
You're the one hiding here in the corner, her conscience said.
Yes, because it was her only way around the tight-lipped devil. — Sabrina Jeffries

In the face of death, he had nothing to lose by speaking of the intimacies of love. Yet, in the face of life, he could speak only of its banalities. — Gerard Brooker

My father and he had one of those English friendships which begins by avoiding the intimacies and eventually eliminates speech altogether. — Jorge Luis Borges

So heedless have we become of our own image that second-hand mobile phones now invariably come with a SIM card chock-full of discarded intimacies. — Will Self

Interference is a terrific page-turner, but it's also a haunting, powerful look at the way families and friendships entangle us all. Berry is a sharp-eyed, engaging writer, and she deftly captures the terrors, ruptures and intimacies of one seemingly ordinary neighborhood, always finding a precarious beauty in her characters' lives. This is a book that is terrifying, startling, and very hard to put down. — Rebecca Godfrey

Olive's private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as "big bursts" and "little bursts." Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee's, let's say, or the waitress at Dunkin' Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really. — Elizabeth Strout

Friendships unfold gradually as women share intimacies with one another- this takes time. You need to be willing to let your friends know the real you, but you don't want to spill your guts out the first time you're out to lunch. — Irene S. Levine

Most / of those he interviewed for the science project had to admit they did not hear the cries of the roses / being burned alive in the noonday sun. Like horses, Geryon would say helpfully, / like horses in war. No, they shook their heads./ Why is grass called blades? he asked them. Isn't it because of the clicking? / They stared at him. You should be / interviewing roses not people, said the science teacher. Geryon liked this idea. / The last page of his project / was a photograph of his mother's rosebush under the kitchen window. / Four od the roses were on fire. / They stood up straight and pure on the stalk, gripping the dark like prophets / and howling colossal intimacies / from the back of their fused throats. — Anne Carson

The ecology of the valley was complex beyond our understanding, and it began to die as we went on manipulating it in ever more frantic ways. As it went dead and empty of the old life it became a place where no one wanted to live. In our right minds we want to seek out places that reek of complexity. Our drive to industrialize soured and undercut the intimacies that drew most people to country life in the first place. — William Kittredge

Humanity shares a common ancestry with all living things on Earth. We often share especially close intimacies with the microbial world. In fact, only a small percentage of the cells in the human body are human at all. Yet, the common biology and biochemistry that unites us also makes us susceptible to contracting and transmitting infectious disease. — Brenda Wilmoth Lerner

Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so 'in-between' things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

My father and he had cemented (the verb is excessive) one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether. They used to exchange books and periodicals; they would beat one another at chess, without saying a word. — Jorge Luis Borges

While I'd been plagued by nightmares of Jonathan's unrest in the hereafter, it was only now that I'd seen Adair again - and seen him so changed - that I could admit, even to myself, that it was him I daydreamed of, who I longed for, who I ached for, physically. That was how I'd betrayed Luke - in my desire for Adair. It wasn't so uncommon, was it? Living with one man while your mind is on another? Being unable to stop thinking of this other man who, for one reason or another, was not the one sitting beside you. Thinking of the way his eyes lit up when he saw you, of his wicked smile and what it was like when he held you, how you responded to the touch of his hands. In solitary moments, you remembered the little intimacies, the feel of his skin against yours, the way he liked to be touched, the velvet nap of his member, the way he tasted. You thought of him even though you could never be with him. His absence nagged like an itch you could never scratch. — Alma Katsu

Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies. — Sherry Turkle

Elizabeth Taylor is, in my opinion, the greatest actress in film history. She instinctively understands the camera and its nonverbal intimacies. Opening her violet eyes, she takes us into the liquid realm of emotion, which she inhabits by Pisces intuition. Richard Burton said that Taylor showed him how to act for the camera. Economy and understatement are essential. At her best, Elizabeth Taylor simply is. An electric, erotic charge vibrates the space between her face and the lens. It is an extra-sensory, pagan phenomenon. — Camille Paglia

We have no good blueprint for how to integrate the contemporary intimacies of female friendship and of marriage into one life. — Rebecca Traister

The stage, the screen, the novel, casual conversation, the street discussion, and too often the fireside intimacies are punctuated with blasphemy, to which may be added, as of the same nature, coarse, ribald jokes, foul stories, and low small talk. Some would have us believe that profanity is a sign of masculinity and emotion maturity. — Ezra Taft Benson

One left; things shifted in one's absence; one returned to something else. Time frustrated all. There was no sneaking past its rough guard, even to get to one's own yard of intimacies. — Gish Jen

From both my families, I've learnt important things.

From my family of chance, I learnt what it was like to be alone and unrecognized, to be perceived through the prism of delusion, a lost soul marooned in the belly of bedlam. I learned the beauty and power of language, but also its capacity for subtle perfidy, how it can be used to subvert and distort reality, to sanction cruelty and sugarcoat abuse. I learned that words can be the path to freedom or just another lock on the caged door.

And from my family of choice, I learn on a daily basis about love and loyalty, about burdens shared and intimacies treasured, about forgiveness and atonement and joy. I learn about the gift of a difficult childhood and the fact that 'it's never too late to have a happy one. — Lucy Taylor

Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk. — Elizabeth Bowen

Should we "expect" our physical, sexual, intellectual, and emotional intimacies to automatically continue throughout a marriage? Nope. At least, not in my opinion. But I do think we should be able to expect both partners to protect and preserve the sanctity of these intimacies. That, to me, is part of honest loyalty. — Cathy Burnham Martin

Dorrigo glimpsed a complex mud of intimacies normally invisible to the world - the shared sleep, scents, sounds, the habits endearing and frustrating, the pleasures and sadnesses, small and large - the plain mortar that finally renders two as one. Her hair was pulled back — Richard Flanagan