#strangers

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

#before #begin #encounter #even #first

Even now I can't stand being recognized in the street. I just hate it when strangers come up and try to talk to me. I'm pathologically shy. ↗

— Jimmy Nail

#come #even #even now #hate #i

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. ↗

— Anonymous

#generosity #guests #hospitality #inspirational #strangers

The city's full of people who you just see around. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#cities #strangers #men

But what Dakota most enjoyed about the beginning of winter was the crispness of the air (that practically demanded the wearing of knits) and the way that tough New Yorkers - on the street, in elevators, in subways - were suddenly willing to risk a smile. To make a connection with a stranger. To finally see one another after strenuously avoiding eye contact all year. ↗

— Kate Jacobs

#new-york-city #strangers #new-york-city

I'd say I'm the opposite of someone that has the urge to stand in front of strangers and make them laugh, but the idea of getting up and telling a story and people finding it amusing always appealed to me. ↗

— Eric Bana

#amusing #appealed #finding #front #getting

I'd rather hang out with five people that I love than with 400 strangers at a club who are all doing the up-and-down inspection thing. They appraise everybody from head to toe - the outfit, the handbag, the shoes, how much they weigh... I can't stand it! ↗

— Sophia Bush

#club #doing #everybody #five #hang

In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer's passivity is kept intact, pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited snippets that permit him or her to sit in easy judgment and feel superior at watching familiar strangers make fools of themselves. Reality TV looks in only one direction: down. ↗

— James Wolcott

#chicken #direction #down #easy #edited

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met. ↗

— William Butler Yeats

#haven #here #met #only #strangers

In my experience - and this is a very awkward way to put it, since I don't really know what the word experience means - the strangest people in one's life are the people one has known and loved, still know and will always love. Here, both I and the vocabulary are both in trouble, for strangest does not imply stranger. A stranger is a stranger is a stranger, simply, and you watch the stranger to anticipate his next move. But the people who elicit from you a depth of attention and wonder which we helplessly call love are perpetually making moves which cannot possibly be anticipated. Eventually, you realize that it never occurred to you to anticipate their next move, not only because you couldn't but because you didn't have to: it was not a question of moving on the next move, but simply, of being present. Danger, true, you try to anticipate and you prepare yourself, without knowing it, to stand in the way of death. For the strangest people in the world are those people recognized, beneath one's senses, by one's soul - the people utterly indispensable for one's journey. ↗

— James Baldwin

#love #people #strangers #death