What Is Intimacy Quotes & Sayings

The thing I've come to learn is that what's great about small independent films is the intimacy and the communication that occurs when you're making them. — Guy Pearce

It's amazing what sometimes gets accomplished via an initially jarring but ultimately harmless shift in thinking. Is cutting the organs out of a dead man and stitching them into someone else barbaric and disrespectful, or is it a straightforward operation to save multiple lives? Does crapping into a Baggie while sitting 6 inches away from your crewmate represent a collapse of human dignity or a unique and comic form of intimacy? — Mary Roach

We know by intuition and study that great books approach a condition both above and below human - what Lesser means by "grandeur and intimacy" - and our job is to place ourselves somewhere on the continuum between those shifting poles, to welcome a gravid agitation or be willing to undergo some form of personal torsion; to have our personhood both threatened and amplified. — William Giraldi

Money is of value for what it buys, and in love it buys time, place, intimacy, comfort, and a private corner alone. — Mae West

Intimacy with God is what determines our exploits — Sunday Adelaja

Soaking" seems like a crazy word in an intimacy book. Yet that is exactly what you want to do in your relational time with Him, you want to "soak in and soak up" His presence, "soak in and soak up" His love. — Linda Boone

What is certain is that he [the baby] has too much attention from the one person who is entirely at his disposal. The intimacy between mother and child is not sustaining and healthy. The child learns to exploit his mother's accessibility, badgering her with questions and demands which are not of any real consequence to him, embarrassing her in public, blackmailing her into buying sweets and carrying him. — Germaine Greer

What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim 'You know exactly what I mean!' depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader. — Will Self

Whatever actions may have been appropriate for your survival when you were a child, are probably no longer necessary. However, the ego cannot know that. It is like a computer program, reacting to life robotically; doing what it deems is most applicable in the present circumstance, according to past experience. The problem is, it often blocks you from feeling what is appropriate in the present moment, through its preconceived notions of what worked best in the past, and may not necessarily pertain any longer. For example you may resist intimacy now by pushing others away, in effect shut them out, because as a five year old you did the same in order to protect your vulnerability. — Paula Horan

The physical stage of bonding is at its most powerful when all other forms of bonding have been achieved. If this has been done, the final petals of the flower have reached full maturity and unfold, leaving no restriction for pleasure, physical or otherwise. Having learned your partner and when to push, pull away or work together in fluid unison; having learned what enthuses and delights their senses, you are prepared to carry all of this knowledge into the sweet cadence of your unity. — Shykia Bell

You know what I find amazing is within Christianity it is not uncommon to find [married] people who don't have sexual intimacy, don't have emotional intimacy, don't have spiritual intimacy, don't pray together, don't do their life together, don't put their schedules together, don't put their budgets together, but they don't get divorced. So they can pat themselves on the back and say, 'We're good Christians.' They're divorced in everything but the paperwork. — Mark Driscoll

How many films are there about friendships between teenagers? And how many projects are there dealing with friendships among adults? True friendships - really dealing with the intimacy behind what happened then, and how long you've known each other, and the wounds that haven't healed. That's what [About Alex] film is about. — Nate Parker

'Frank's really different from everything I've done. Maybe the one thing that's the same, and the thing that I tend to do, is that I think I can create an intimacy with the characters, like a sense of presence with the people in the film, and that's what I tried to do in 'Room' as well. — Lenny Abrahamson

I think the point of cinematography, of what we do, is intimacy. Is intent, is the balance between the familiar and the dream, it is being subjective and objective, it is being engaged and yet standing back and noticing something that perhaps other people didn't notice before, or celebrating something that you feel is beautiful or valid, or true or engaging in some way. — Christopher Doyle

Nothing has emerged more clearly from the Everyday Sexism Project than the urgent need for far more comprehensive mandatory sex-and-relationships education in schools, to include issues such as consent and respect, domestic violence and rape. It's not just girls who need it so desperately. For boys porn provides some very scary, dictatorial lessons about what it means to be a man and how they are apparently expected to exert their male dominance over women. It is as unrealistic to expect them, unaided, to instinctively work out the difference between online porn and real, caring intimacy, as it is to demand the same intuition of young women. According — Laura Bates

Sometimes living with memory, with the thought of what friends, those who shared your soul and dreams, will do to you is worse than taking a bullet or having someone stab your flesh. There is a way of bleeding from one's soul. — Megan McKenna

Remember, couples come together out of an equal fear of intimacy. Our Enlightened Brains want to be intimate, but our Caveman Brains push against it, and so we search out pseudo-intimate relationships in an ultimately fruitless attempt to find true Connection. What's to be done? The Universe is always working for us and with us! Partners are the catalysts for each others' healing, growth, and spiritual evolution. We seek out, find, and love those people who cause us the most distress, but through our love we have this amazing opportunity to work on those barriers to intimacy that have prevented Connection. We can choose to heal the old traumas and live lives of incredible peace, spiritual prosperity, and enlightenment. — Carol Clark

A couple can be quite intimate without sharing bodies - though you will likely not believe that, my Cam. But it can be true. What I feel for you is highly intense, whether you are standing next to me or living a hundred miles away. I do not have to be touching you at all to experience what I feel. — Jennifer Ashley

Consciousness-raising is at the very least supposed to bring about an intimacy, but what it seems instead to bring about are the trappings of intimacy, the illusion of intimacy, a semblance of intimacy. — Nora Ephron

Unlike film and TV, theater is a luxury object, but one that ordinary middle-class people can still afford. Above all, it isn't a mass medium: Live theater is a small-scale, handmade art form. Intimacy is what makes it special. — Terry Teachout

I feel like we're all here on this planet, and intimacy is important. I can't bear small talk, it's awful. I want to get beyond that thing of discussing how the weather is a bit better today than it was yesterday, and how this is a nice restaurant. I want to get to what are the problems, what's really going on. Are you in love? Are you in a lot of pain? What's really going on in your life? I'm interested in that area, whether it's on stage or in real life. — Simon Amstell

Life is the most precious and wondrous thing that any of us have. Along the way, one of the real miracles occurs when we realize that what really matters is to deepen our relationship to ourselves and that to do this we have to enter a spiritual journey. We have to discover anew, or for the first time, our own relationship to the Infinite. We must begin to risk trusting a whole new level of intimacy with ourselves, life and the people whose lives we touch. — Richard Moss

The glances musicians exchange, when music is effortless, that was what he wanted from Milly, that intimacy. — David Mitchell

What is the greatest need of human beings? What is it they seek from me always? Intimacy. I listen with all my being, I am completely interested. I seek momentarily a full communion of eyes, feelings, thoughts. — Anais Nin

Loneliness has little to do with what we do or where we do it, whether we're married or unmarried, optimists or pessimists, heterosexual or homosexual. Loneliness has to do with the sudden clefts we experience in every human relation, the gaps that open up with such stomach-turning unexpectedness. In a brief moment, I and my brother or sister have moved away into different worlds, and there is no language we can share ... It is in the middle of intimacy that the reality of loneliness most dramatically appears. — Rowan Williams

We can be confident in our dealings with the world when what the world sees is the outer person, with all the outer person's defences: the intimacy of a love affair is a different matter altogether. And who might not feel just the slightest bit insecure under the gaze of a lover
a gaze which falls on birthmarks, on blemishes physical and psychological, on our imperfections and impatience, on our human vulnerability? — Alexander McCall Smith

Let us labour to feel what an evil thing this is-little love to our own dying Saviour, little joy in our precious Jesus, little fellowship with the Beloved! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Every person you meet introduces the accident of that person to you. What can go right and what can go wrong. There is no intimacy without consequence. Which — Elan Mastai

I tell you what," said Troy more amiably. "I've always been frightened of the whole business. Love and so on."
"The physical side?"
"Yes, that, but much more than that. The whole business. The breaking down of all one's reserves. The mental as well as the physical intimacy."
"My mind to me a kingdom is. — Ngaio Marsh

Carnal love, despite its seeming intimacy, often can become an exchange of egotisms. The ego is projected onto the other person and what is loved is not the other person, but the pleasure the other person gives. — Fulton J. Sheen

What I love is to cook for someone. To put a freshly made meal on the table, even if it is something very plain and simple . . . is a sincere expression of affection, it is an act of binding intimacy directed at whoever has a welcome place in your heart. — Katie Workman

I tell the girls in our student ministry, You don't really want sex. What you want is intimacy. You want to meet a guy, fall in love, and know you can trust him completely. You want somebody with whom you can share everything there is to know about you without fear of betrayal or rejection. You want to be fully known and to know him fully. Purity now paves the way to intimacy later. — Andy Stanley

Thorn carried in each limb every hour of her training, every day and year bound into the muscle of her arms, written along the length of her legs, beaten into the hardness of stomach and thigh. She knew five dozen ways to kill, she knew them with a lover's intimacy, and in the execution perhaps lust also played its role - for what is lust but a hunger? And hunger must be fed. — Mark Lawrence

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

Because that's what intimacy is: It's a willingness to be vulnerable, a willingness to bite my tongue and a willingness to set an example of what I believe in. — Diane Lane

It is my opinion that religious experience may be a unique combination of Child (a feeling of intimacy) and Adult (a reflection on ultimacy) with the total exclusion of the Parent. I believe the total exclusion of the Parent is what happens in kenosis, or self-emptying. . . . I believe that what is emptied is the Parent. How can one experience joy, or ecstasy, in the presence of those recordings in the Parent with produced NOT OK originally? How can I feel acceptance in the presence of the earliest felt rejection? It is true that Mother was a participant in intimacy in the beginning, but it was an intimacy which did not last, was conditional, and was "never enough." I believe the Adult's function in the religious experience is to block out the Parent in order that the Natural Child may reawaken to its own worth and beauty as a part of God's creation. — Thomas A. Harris

Intimacy, says the phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, is the highest value. I resist this statement at first. What about artistic achievement, or moral courage, or heroism, or altruistic acts, or work in the cause of social change? What about wealth or accomplishment? And yet something about it rings true, finally - that what we want is to be brought into relationship, to be inside, within. Perhaps it's true that nothing matters more to us than that. — Mark Doty

We keep quiet about what we read. Our enjoyment of a book remains a jealously guarded secret. Perhaps because there's no need to talk, or because it takes time to distill what we've read before we can say anything. Silence is our guarantee of intimacy. We might have finished reading but we're still living
the book. — Daniel Pennac

What he wants is intimacy, but I can't give him that. — Margaret Atwood

Krista asks,"What is it about society that disappoints you so much?"

Elliot thinks, "Oh I don't know, is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children?

Or maybe it's that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit; the world itself's just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our burning commentary of bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy.

Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money.
I'm not saying anything new. We all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books makes us happy but because we wanna be sedated. Because it's painful not to pretend, because we're cowards.

Fuck Society."

"Mr. Robot" season 1 episode 1, 'ohellofriend.mov — Sam Esmail

Now the police dreams that one look at the gigantic map on the office wall should suffice at any given moment to establish who is related to whom and in what degree of intimacy; and, theoretically, this dream is not unrealizable although its technical execution is bound to be somewhat difficult. If this map really did exist, not even memory would stand in the way of the totalitarian claim to domination; such a map might make it possible to obliterate people without any traces, as if they had never existed at all. — Hannah Arendt

This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy - even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

That single moment's intensity hasn't been matched in my life before or since. A woman I didn't know had chosen to accept me, in body and mind. Perhaps it is this instant that forms the basis of traditional marriage - a complete stranger is suddenly mine. And then, I am hers, too; I must offer her my all. I want her to wield her power over me as an acknowledgment of my love. The rush of those feelings all at once is too much to describe. Language communicates in terms of what is already known; it chokes up when asked to deal with the entirely unprecedented. — Vivek Shanbhag

Intimacy cannot be expressed discursively. The swelling to the bursting point, the malice that breaks out with clenched teeth and weeps; the sinking feeling that doesn't know where it comes from or what it's about; the fear that sings its head off in the dark; the white-eyed pallor, the sweet sadness, the rage and the vomiting...are so many evasions. What is intimate, in the strong sense, is what has the passion of an absence of individuality, the imperceptible sonority of a river, the empty limpidity of the sky — Georges Bataille

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

But obviously, things have changed in many ways since the '50s, when the show is started, in terms of sexuality, and how much access we have to images of it and information about it. But, the same problems always apply. It doesn't matter whether we know a lot more about sex now or if there's a lot more access to it. The same problems of intimacy, of dealing with other people, of connecting and being vulnerable with other people, which is what the show is ultimately about, still applies now, I think. — Michael Sheen

The things we need most are the things we have become most afraid of, such as adventure, intimacy, and authentic communication. We avert our eyes and stick to comfortable topics. We hold it as a virtue to be private, to be discreet, so that no one sees our dirty laundry. We are uncomfortable with intimacy and connection, which are among the greatest of our unmet needs today. To be truly seen and heard, to be truly known, is a deep human need. Our hunger for it is so omnipresent, so much apart of our life experience, that we no more know what it is missing than a fish knows it is wet. We need more intimacy than nearly anyone considers normal. Always hungry for it, we seek solace and sustenance in the closest available substitutes: television, shopping, pornography, conspicuous consumption - anything to ease the hurt, to feel connected, or to project an image by which we might be seen or known, or at least see and know ourselves. — Charles Eisenstein

Everyone knows what falling in love is like but being in love is what people have lost. That intimacy to be in bed with somebody and just laugh and not hold anybody accountable for what they say. — Mark Polish

What has made the day so perfect ? To begin with , it is a pattern of freedom. It's setting has not been cramped in space or time. An island, curiously enough, gives a limitless feeling or both. Nor has the day been limited in kinds of activity. It has a natural balance of physical, intellectual and social life. It has an easy unforced rhythm. Work is not deformed by pressure. Relationship is not strangled by claims. Intimacy is tempered by lightness of touch. We have moved through our day like dancers not needing to touch more than lightly because we were instinctively moving to the same rhythm. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I'm not who that guy says I am. I'm not who that girl says I am. I'm not who social media likes and comments say I am. I'm not who the grades, to-do lists, messes, and mess ups say I am. I'm not who the scale says I am or the sum total of what my flaws say I am. I'm going to stop flirting with the unstable things of this world so I can fall completely in love with You. I am loved. I am held. I am Yours. I am forever Yours." The more intimacy like this that I have with God, the more secure my true identity is. — Lysa TerKeurst

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

I confess that I have not cleared a path through all seven hundred pages, I confess to having examined only bits and pieces, and yet I know what it is, with that bold and legitimate certainty with which we assert our knowledge of a city, without ever having been rewarded with the intimacy of all the many streets it includes. — Jorge Luis Borges

All intimacy is rare-that's what makes it precious. — Amy Bloom

Capturing intimacy is pretty much the only thing I'm interested in. That's what excites me and what I find beautiful in movies personally - that almost obscene sense that we shouldn't be this close to these people. I find that very inviting and meaningful as an audience member. — Ira Sachs

Today I want to belong. I want to feel safe and at home. I want to be aware of what it is like simply to be, without defenses or desires. I will appreciate the flow of life for what it is-my own true self. I will notice those moments of intimacy with myself, when I feel that "I am" is enough to sustain me forever. I will lie on the grass at one with nature, expanding until my being fades into the infinite. — Deepak Chopra

He was a mystery. Intimacy is a mystery; maybe that's what he wanted. — Gwendoline Riley

What we need to understand is that books weren't written so that young people could write essays about them, but so that they could read them if they really wanted to.
Knowledge, academic track record, career, and social life are one thing. Our intimacy and cultural awareness as readers are quite another. — Daniel Pennac

What is the sign of a friend? Is it that he tells you his secret sorrows? No, it is that he tells you his secret joys. Many people will confide their secret sorrows to you, but the final mark of intimacy is when they share their secret joys with you. — Oswald Chambers

The Fathers intent desire is that none would 'perish'. The promise God has given us is one of 'liberation'- Freedom. Being set free "from" captivity and reconciled "to" your Father. Intimacy with Jesus garners son-ship with Abba. As Jesus "demonstrated" that Son-ship of Grace he said, 'I only "say" and "do" what I hear the Father saying and doing'. Proclaiming the Kingdom of God by "Do'in the Stuff". The early church 'got' Jesus. John Wimber 're-got' Jesus and began proclaiming the Kingdom and demonstrating it as any loving son would of his Father. Now, we are no longer refuges but 'Bona Fide' citizens in good standing with our King and our new country. Where Love, Mercy, Grace; Peace 'rains' on us eternally here and now. 'The Already But Not Yet' (Ruis)."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] — R. Alan Woods

When language arrives at its own edge, what it finds is not a positivity that contradicts it, but the void that will efface it. Into that void it must go, consenting to come undone in the rumbling, in the immediate negation of what it says, in a silence that is not the intimacy of a secret but a pure outside where words endlessly unravel. — Michel Foucault

What are you thinking of so earnestly?" said he, as they walked back to the ballroom; "not of your partner, I hope, for, by that shake of the head, your meditations are not satisfactory."
Catherine coloured, and said, "I was not thinking of anything."
That is artful and deep, to be sure; but I had rather be told at once that you will not tell me."
Well then, I will not."
Thank you; for now we shall soon be acquainted, as I am authorized to tease you on this subject whenever we meet, and nothing in the world advances intimacy so much. — Jane Austen

I think our lack of intimacy with the land has initiated a lack of intimacy with each other. What we perceive as non- human, outside of us, is actually in direct relationship with us. — Terry Tempest Williams

I think we need to teach pleasure. What beautiful touch means. What reciprocity means. What being connected and what intimacy means. Boys get out there at a young age and the performance posturing is so great and ends up being hard and aggressive. — Eve Ensler

You don't have to be young. You don't have to be thin. You don't have to be "hot" in a way that some dumbfuckedly narrow mindset has construed that word. You don't have to have taut flesh or a tight ass or an eternally upright set of tits. You have to find a way to inhabit your body while enacting your deepest desires. You have to be brave enough to build the intimacy you deserve. You have to take off all of your clothes and say, "I'm right here." There are so many tiny revolutions in a life, a million ways we have to circle around ourselves to grow and change and be okay. And perhaps the body is our final frontier. It's the one place we can't leave. We're there till it goes. Most women and some men spend their lives trying to alter it, hide it, prettify it, make it what it isn't, or conceal it for what it is. But what if we didn't do that? That's the question you need to answer, — Cheryl Strayed

Intimacy between humans need not be relegated to independent film. Real characters can exist no matter what the scale of a movie is. — Colin Trevorrow

Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations ... Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone ... — Henry Green

God knows, when spring comes to Paris the humbles mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise ... it [is] the the intimacy with which his eye rests upon the scene. It [is] his Paris. A man does not need to be rich, nor even a citizen, to feel this way about Paris. Paris is filled with poor people - the proudest and filthiest lot of beggars that ever walked the earth ... And yet they give the illusion of being at home. It is that which distinguishes the Parisian from all other metropolitan souls.
When I think of New York I have a very different feeling. New York makes even a rich man feel his unimportance. New York is cold, glisttering, malign. The buildings dominate. There is a sort of atomic frenzy to the activity going on; the more furious the pace, the more diminished the spirit ... Nobody knows what it's all about. Nobody directs the energy. Stupendous. Bizarre. Baffling. A tremendous reactive urge, but absolutely uncoordinated. — Henry Miller

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

the most significant consequence of Adam's and Eve's sin was the immediate loss of intimacy with Yahweh. To restore what was lost, God had to become our Redeemer and Savior. Although Adam and Eve created a wide separation between God and the human race, man is incapable of bridging the gap. Yahweh had to do that Himself. — Neil Snyder

The fears that assault us are mostly simple anxieties about social skills, about intimacy, about likeableness, or about performance. We need not give emotional food or charge to these fears or become attached to them. We don't even have to shame ourselves for having these fears. Simply ask your fears, "What are you trying to teach me?" Some say that FEAR is merely an acronym for "False Evidence Appearing Real."
From Everything Belongs, p. 143 — Richard Rohr

I'm interested in connecting with readers and strangers through poetry. I want to create real intimacy with my poems. Whether I do that through pulling from my personal life or using my fantasy life - or say history, whether that history is personal history or our collective histories - what's important is that an experience is created. An experience that will hopefully matter to people and feel real. I want my poems to move people and make them want to live their lives, however complicated and impossible those lives may be. I think a poem can speak to the life you currently live but also to the lives you've lived before, the ones to come and also those you've yet to imagine. What else can do that? Not sex or money or other people. — Alex Dimitrov

I find it hard to describe what it is like to look fully into eyes that one has known that well
known better than one knows the look of one's own eyes, actually
and then put away, deliberately forgotten. That instantly reasserted intimacy, that resumption of what looks like friendly concern, is like nakedness, like exposure. — Wallace Stegner

No scientist knows the world merely by holding it at arm's length: if we ever managed to build the objectivist wall between the knower and the known, we could know nothing except the wall itself. Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known. That encounter has moments of distance, but it would not be an encounter without moments of intimacy as well. Knowing of any sort is relational, animated by a desire to come into deeper community with what we know. — Parker J. Palmer

If you truly desire intimacy with your Father and Jesus, you must be willing to do what is the very heart of intimacy: share who you really are with Him - all your innermost thoughts and feelings. — Linda Boone

If you had a yard as a child, you probably remember it with a startling intimacy. You knew that yard: every inch, every bush, each step on the tree you could climb, the whorls and knots in the branches, the bare dirt spots, the sandy gravel, the soft grass. It was deep, profound, intimate local knowledge. You intuitively knew what was happening around you at all times. Primitive man would have felt that way about a much larger stretch of ground, but it was still "his" territory. This very ability is really what allowed Homo sapiens to expand and succeed the way he did. — Sam Sheridan

There is a universal urge for intimacy, for trading subjectivities, in communication. For Telepathy. Our desire for it tells us about what we wish to be: truly intersubjective beings. — David Porush

If someone asked you what the greatest good on this earth is, what would you say? An epic surf session? Financial security? Health? Meaningful, trusting friendships? Intimacy with your spouse? Knowing that you belong? The greatest good on this earth is God. Period. God's one goal for us is Himself. — Francis Chan

If you think of life and death on a continuum, finding the point where it tips is complicated. It cuts across all political lines and gets to the root of our humanity. It requires faith informed by years of intimacy that you're doing what's right for your loved one. — Eleanor Clift

Sex isn't what I'm after. Sex is just what I can get. — John Valentine

When the Irish nun said to me, "Speak your name loud and clear so that all the boys and girls can hear you," she was asking me to use language publicly, with strangers. That's the appropriate instruction for a teacher to give. If she were to say to me, "We are going to speak now in Spanish, just like you do at home. You can whisper anything you want to me, and I am going to call you by a nickname, just like your mother does," that would be inappropriate. Intimacy is not what classrooms are about. — Richard Rodriguez

If you age with somebody, you go through so many roles - you're lovers, friends, enemies, colleagues, strangers; you're brother and sister. That's what intimacy is, if you're with your soulmate. — Cate Blanchett

The concept of reconciliation is not irretrievable, but I am convinced that before we theologians can interpret the depths of the divine action of reconciliation we must first articulate the profound deformities of Christian intimacy and identity in modernity. Until we do, all theological discussions of reconciliation will be exactly what they tend to be: (a) ideological tools for facilitating negotiations of power; or (b) socially exhausted idealist claims masquerading as serious theological accounts. In truth, it is not at all clear that most Christians are ready to imagine reconciliation. — Willie James Jennings

I have never cataloged what I would want in a marriage. I might as well do it now ... I want an arrangement in which love and passion mingle and last. I want a rock to lean against. I want sex to pierce reality and come blazing out the other side. I want to feel that someone has my back. I want it to be us against the world. I want marriage to be cool. I want the words wife and husband to resonate with joy. I want our intimacy to be inviolate. I want it all under one roof. I want the institution to deserve my energy and my commitment and the last decades of my life.I want what Jane Cooper called "A radiance of attention/Like the candle's flame when we eat." I want to wake up next to a person who feels what I feel - that there is a constant, self-renewing joy in being with the other. — Wendy Plump

Men don't open up because they are prideful and self-protective. The lonely, isolated man is that way because he won't make himself known to others. Disclosure of self is the currency of intimacy. It's what our wives want and what true friendship demands. You don't have to spill your guts to everybody or anybody, but God will get you to the place where you know you need to do it with somebody. The temptation to keep it all inside is the downside of being wired as a protector. He loves us too much to leave us alone. You will never fulfill your potential as a man of God going it alone. — James MacDonald

Because I am afraid of commitment. This movie certainly has some bearing and is some reflection of my real feeling about relationships, because I do have commitment issues. My friends tell me I have intimacy problems, but they don't know me, so who cares what they think? — Garry Shandling

I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can't have it all. — Ariel Levy

If you want to improve your sex life as a couple, you need to examine your relationship outside the bedroom. What are you doing that is keeping you from sexual intimacy? — Kevin Leman

When you weep, Jesus weeps with you. And together you enter into the dance of tears. The dance of tears with Jesus is a precious intimacy He shares only with those who have known deep suffering. In the dance of tears, Jesus shares your pain. He carries your deep sorrows in His everlasting arms. And He ultimately turns your mourning into dancing. He revives and saves your crushed spirit. What a blessed comfort in our deepest darkness to know the One who shares the depth of every pain and loss, every joy and gladness. Jesus, He is the One. — Catherine Martin

We are summoned not only to intimacy but to take possession of our very oneness with the Son of God in the inner life of the Trinity in the communication of the very Love of Father and Son, the Most Holy Spirit. This is what centering prayer is about. — M. Basil Pennington

We long for an intimate connection, but that longing makes us feel vulnerable. Therefore, we guard our hearts for self-preservation, which barricades that intimacy we are longing for. Casual sex is a very sad cat and mouse game. The man is entrapped in his role as the sex-driven predator constantly on the hunt for new conquests, while the woman is the prey that must find her perfect combination of sexual allure and virtue, with the sexual allure being what attracts him and virtue what keeps him. — Maggie Young

God first appeared on the scene of human history in the role of a matchmaker. What a profound and exciting revelation!
Is it too much to suggest that Eve came to Adam on the arm of the Lord Himself in the same way that a bride today walks down the aisle of the church on her father's arm? What human mind can fathom the depth of love and joy that filled the heart of the great Creator as He united the man and woman in this first marriage ceremony?
Surely this account is one among countless indications that the Bible is not a work of merely human authorship. Moses is generally accepted as the author of the creation record. But apart from supernatural inspiration, he would never have dared to open human history with a scene of such amazing intimacy - first between God and man, and then between man and woman. — Derek Prince

I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been. — Raymond Carver

I'm counting my drawer when Regn comes into the office. I hear her before she enters. I listen for her. The sound of the keypad, the sound of three doors. I saw her pull up on my way in. The anticipation is what I love. The details. The security of knowing she's arrived and will be here for the day. Even if we don't have the leisure of time, we have time. It is the unspoken acknowledgments to self. The constant checking and watching for expressions, inflections in the voice, mannerisms. It is a gradual advance. The more we are restrained, the stronger it grows. It is innocence and age that allows the affection to mature, naturally, as it should. Something inside stirs, the heart itself is attracted, much before the body responds. Knowing Regn looks forward to seeing me as much as I do her makes me happy. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

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

What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing. — Audrey Niffenegger

The struggle for true openness and intimacy is a lifelong struggle for all of us, gay and straight alike. And besides, a difficult life brings you to the core of yourself, where you learn what justice is and how it has to be fought for. — Paul Monette

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

Abiding time is extravagant daily time with Jesus. This extravagant time is the center of abiding. Not legalism, not dry discipline, not manufactured spirituality, but joyous soaking in the presence of Jesus, lavish spending of time with Him who is most precious, Him from whom all life flows. In a world that is over-connected yet lonely, frantically busy yet accomplishing little of eternal value, super-informed but egregiously ignorant on what really matters, abiding gives Jesus the best of our time, in which He leads us to the best of times. — Missionaries Who Love The Arab World

The best thing that can happen to me when I'm writing fiction is to lose sight of the fact that I'm writing at all. It's as though I enter into a kind of trance. I know I'm writing, but I don't THINK about it. I just let my fingers type
it's as though the feeling comes out directly through them, bypassing the brain altogether. When that happens, I feel completely transported. There is nothing else like this feeling, very little else is more important to me. That intimacy I feel between myself and my work is what makes me feel at home on the earth. I am basically a shy person, basically a loner and an outsider; and I have been all my life. But when I achieve the kind of connection I can through writing, I feel I'm sitting in the lap of God. — Elizabeth Berg

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