#relationships

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#relationships #weirdness #weird

What if we just acknowledged that we have a bad relationship, and we stuck it out, anyway? What if we admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we can't live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives together -- in misery, but happy to not be apart. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#misery

Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them. You simply say, "Here are the perimeters of our attention. If you prowl around under the windows till the crickets go silent, we will pull the shades. If you wish us to suffer your envious curiosity, you must permit us not to notice it." Anyone with one solid human bond is that smug, and it is the smugness as much as the comfort and safety that lonely people covet and admire. ↗

— Marilynne Robinson

#friend #loneliness #relationships #safety #sister

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

#fault #goodbyes #love #relationships #love

My mom told me once that Wyatt loved her the way a boy will love his mother, but I loved her the way an artist loves another. Jo taught me what that meant. ↗

— Laura Anderson Kurk

#artist #creativity #dating #death #family

But with her eyes closed, she began to whisper. “If you have someone to love, then love. If you have someone to forgive, then forgive. You think, when you’re seventeen, there’s time enough for that, but there’s not. There’s no time at all.” I squeezed her hand, trying to think of how to respond. But she took the burden from me and kept whispering. “You want to know why God gave us people to love? Because that’s the only way we can understand how he feels about us. Desperate and jealous. ↗

— Laura Anderson Kurk

#art #artist #dating #death #dying-words

She pictured a dandelion gone by, the white, almost airless pieces of her family scattered so far. ↗

— Elizabeth Strout

#family

Aw honey. Today's as important as forever." Grandpa Joe in "Shave and a Haircut" Flash Warden and Other Stories ↗

— Eileen Granfors

#family-relationships #flash-fiction #hint-fiction #six-word-memoirs #women

Annabeth,” he said hesitantly, “in New Rome, demigods can live their whole lives in peace.” Her expression turned guarded. “Reyna explained it to me. But, Percy, you belong at Camp Half-Blood. That other life—” “I know,” Percy said. “But while I was there, I saw so many demigods living without fear: kids going to college, couples getting married and raising families. There’s nothing like that at Camp Half-Blood. I kept thinking about you and me…and maybe someday when this war with the giants is over…” It was hard to tell in the golden light, but he thought Annabeth was blushing. “Oh,” she said… “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just…I had to think of that to keep going. To give me hope. Forget I mentioned—” “No!” she said. “Gods, Percy, that’s so sweet. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#hope #percy-jackson #percy-jackson-and-the-olympians #relationships #reyna

You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension. ↗

— Marilynne Robinson

#fathers #generations #knowledge #relationships #sons