Intimate Strangers Quotes & Sayings

I follow these intimate connections of strangers and, surprise!, end up finding even myself in the work at some point. — Aleksandra Mir

They looked at each other. Like they knew everything about each other. Like that. But what exactly did they know, these strangers who were so familiar and intimate? You fought a war with someone, and you knew them. But you only knew the part that was in the war, the part that knew how to fight. The other part, the pedestrian part that lived in the endless calmness of days, you didn't know that part. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

I never go to the cinema. I can't stand sitting in the dark with strangers
all of us obliged to share the same emotional experiences
it's too intimate. I like to be emotional in private. — Peter Greenaway

Thus, those who say they would have right without its correlate, wrong; or good government without its correlate, misrule, do not apprehend the great principles of the universe, nor the nature of all creation. — Zhuangzi

I'm also a devoted father, and you see that side of me at the same time. — Bill Goldberg

I intend to scream, shout, race the engine, call when I feel like it, throw tantrums in Bloomingdale's if I feel like it and confess intimate details about my life to complete strangers. I intend to do what I want to do and be whom I want to be and answer only to myself: that is, quite simply, the bitch philosophy ... — Elizabeth Wurtzel

We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. This is insanity. Feed yourselves. Feed your loved ones. And for God's sake feed your children. — Alton Brown

I wasn't big on family gatherings. Too many intimate strangers. I smiled a lot, but really I never knew what to say. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

Anger is one of the most intimate of emotions and to expose it to strangers is one of the most stupid and sickening things to do. Never get angry with strangers because they are strangers. — James Clavell

We watched each other's eyes. We were as strangers, in that moment - as intimate as strangers - for strangers know more of us, and can judge of us more without reproach than ever those we love. — M T Anderson

I feel a reassuring oneness with other people when I find that even my most intimate, anguished, socially inadmissible emotions and desires are known to others ... Kindred souls - indeed, my selves otherwise costumed - turn up in books in the most unexpected places. Discovering them is one of the great rewards of a liberal education. If I quote liberally, it is not to show off book learning, which at my stage of life can only invite ridicule, but rather to bathe in this kinship of strangers. — Yi-Fu Tuan

The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books. — Edmund White

But as spring blooms, the birds grow drunk with love and the bushes riot with their songs. Far, far into the night, darkness mutes but does not silence them, and small melodious conversations break out at all hours, invisible and strangely intimate in the dead of night, as though one overheard the lovemaking of strangers in the room next door. — Diana Gabaldon

And you, behind the footlight's lure,
Kissing an actress on the stage,
Will leave her presence there, I'm sure,
As I my people on the page.
And yet - I love you, darling, yet
I sat with someone at a table
And gloried in our minds that met
As sometimes strangers' minds are able
To leap the bounds of times and spaces
And find, in sharing wine and bread
And light in one another's faces
And in the words that each has said
An intercourse so intimate
It shook me deeply, to the core.
I said good-night, for it was late;
We parted at my hotel door
And I went in, turned down the bed
And took my bath and thought of you ... — Madeleine L'Engle

Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there's a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life. — Suzanne Vega

There is a huge difference between writing a book, which is a private activity I engage in with myself, and wanting to engage in overly intimate personal conversations with strangers, which I pretty much never want to do. — Michelle Tea

How should anything be sacred to an advertiser?" demanded Ingleby, helping himself to four lumps of sugar. "We spend our whole time asking intimate questions of perfect strangers and it naturally blunts our finer feelings. 'Mother! Has your Child Learnt Regular Habits?' 'Are you Troubled with Fullness after Eating?' 'Are you satisfied about your Drains?' 'Are you Sure that your Toilet-Paper is Germ-free?' 'Your most Intimate Friends dare not Ask you this question.' 'Do you Suffer from Superfluous Hair?' 'Do you Like them to Look at your Hands?' 'Do you ever ask yourself about Body-Odour?' 'If anything Happened to You, would your Loved Ones be Safe?' 'Why Spend so much Time in the Kitchen?' 'You think that Carpet is Clean - but is it?' 'Are you a Martyr to Dandruff?' Upon my soul, I sometimes wonder why the long-suffering public doesn't rise up and slay us. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I myself stand on one side and the rest of the world on the other. There is an abyss between, that no power can cross, a strange barrier more insuperable than a mountain of fire. Husband and wife know nothing of one another. However ardent their passion, however intimate their union, they are never one; they are scarcely more to one another than strangers. — W. Somerset Maugham

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Consciousness of unconsciousness — Philip K. Dick

Press and gloom make recognition difficult. Man and wife are strangers two paces apart to mention only this most intimate of all bonds. Let them move on till they are close enough to touch and then without pausing on their way exchange a look. If they recognize each other it does not appear. Whatever it is they are searching for it is not that. — Samuel Beckett

When Group is over, we all pile into the same elevator and nobody says a word. That's the strange thing about elevators, it's like they have this power to silence you. I've just been in group therapy where people will reveal the most intimate details of their lives to complete strangers, yet in the elevator nobody can say a word. — Augusten Burroughs

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

There was an intimate connection between them, as if they'd known each other always. They were not strangers; they'd merely never met before. — Sherry Thomas

Truth provides the most diplomatic answer): I don't believe I've ever attended one since I was your age where I didn't feel, beforehand, an oppressive dread at the isolation that can reign in a large enough group of even the most intimate friends, much less an admixture of intimates, acquaintances, and strangers. Still, so much of my social education has been effected in such gatherings, so many true friendships have had their beginnings in meetings much like yours and mine, that I feel these affairs must not only be endured, but negotiated with a certain energy, if not commitment. — Samuel R. Delany

There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original. — Judith Butler

A couple you do not recognize - visitors, strangers - come to the door. How are you to view these people and what is your responsibility towards them? ... To assume that these visitors are really like you, that there are no real difference between you and them, and that the highest goal possible is that you and the other members of your congregation will become intimate friends with them and invite them into the private spaces of your life. — Thomas G. Long