QUOTES ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
Quotes about relationships capture the complexity of connection, love, and understanding between people. They reflect both the beauty and the challenges that come with sharing our lives with others. The following collection offers insights that may resonate, comfort, or inspire reflection on the bonds we form. Select Another Topic
We are all deceivers to some degree. The difference between safe and unsafe “liars” is that safe people own their lies and see them as a problem to change as they become aware of their deception.
- Henry Cloud
But everything I have to give, I'll give to you
- Ray Lamontagne
She didn't want me; she wanted all of me. I didn't mind saying it. My girlfriend scared the crap out of me.
- T.J. Forrester
Miracles, Inc.: A Novel
And if insight were sufficient, if the inner life were the whole of life, their happiness has been assured.
- E M Forster
Don’t ever stray from yourself, in order to be close to someone that doesn’t have the courtesy to remind you of your worth, or the integrity of a gentleman to walk you home.
'Better to have loved and lost,' my ass.
Anyone parroting that little platitude had obviously never lost anyone of consequence.
Anyone parroting that little platitude had obviously never lost anyone of consequence.
- Nenia Campbell
Touched with Sight
He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don't. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us.
- Peter S. Beagle
A Fine and Private Place
I could probably write a book on the complexities of our relationship, on my constantly shifting emotions, my ever-changing mind, but let's just say that nothing is ever as black and white as it seems, that love is not only blind but pathetic too. It can make us into victims and fools, reduce us to the kind of people who infuriate us on soap operas, the kind you want to scream at for allowing the creep or bitch to walk all over them.
- J.M. Morris
Fiddleback: A Novel
Attention is not intention.
- Matthew Hussey
Love Life: How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and Live Happily
The thing about her is, she’s good-natured. He knew it the second he saw her standing by the parking meters. He could just tell from the soft way her belly looked. With women, you keep bumping against them, because they want different things, they’re a different race. Either they give, like a plant, or scrape, like a stone. In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman’s good nature.
- John Updike
Rabbit, Run
Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known.
- Mark Epstein
Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life - Insights from Buddhism and Psychotherapy
At least there's nothing scary about him and hopefully he doesn't see anything scary in me. We go way back, to summer camp. We KNOW each other. People I don't know just make me want to say YIKES! I'll take history over mystery any day of the week.
- Douglas Coupland
Shampoo Planet
I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.
- E M Forster
Howards End
With him everything is a test, affection is measured, that given weighed against that which has been received, and the balance, more often than not, disappointing him.
- S. J. Watson
Before I Go to Sleep
Exposure to erotically inclined stimuli immediately activates parts of a male brain that are associated with sexual desire. Being attracted to other women, however, doesn’t mean men would betray the trust they are given and harm the partnership with the women they love.
- Tatjana Ostojic
(Peter) If you don't share the lows, it seems you might stop sharing the highs as well.
- Nancy Woodruff
My Wife's Affair
Real relationships are the product of time spent, which is why so many of us have so few of them.
I arrived, I saw humans and I saw through their faces. Nothing ever changes but the light in their eyes. For I too have buried my demons today, without knowing what might remain beneath the face of tomorrow.
You can never recover from losing a person you love, but you can find a way to let it be part of your life rather than letting it take over every part of you
- Darien Gee
Friendship Bread
I wept for relationships not possible due to denial and dreams locked in the back of people’s minds, all of the bits of life that lay dormant until the babblings of televisions and nursing homes sweep them away. It makes me wonder how many of the dreams we had originally have already been forgotten.
- Christopher Hawke
Unnatural Truth
Robots are like Mars: they need
girls.
Boys won't do;
the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp
when they should kiss
and they're none too keen
on having things shoved inside them...
It's not a robot
until you put a girl inside. Sometimes
I feel like that.
A junkyard
the Company forgot to put a girl in.
girls.
Boys won't do;
the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp
when they should kiss
and they're none too keen
on having things shoved inside them...
It's not a robot
until you put a girl inside. Sometimes
I feel like that.
A junkyard
the Company forgot to put a girl in.
- Catherynne M. Valente
Melancholy of Mechagirl
It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted.
An apple tree is just like a person. In order to thrive, it needs companionship that's similar to it in some ways, but quite different than others.
- Jeffrey Stepakoff
The Orchard
It's early days. A few skeletons are bound to keep jumping out of the closet.
- Alan Moore
Watchmen
We are all deceivers to some degree. The difference between safe and unsafe “liars” is that safe people own their lies and see them as a problem to change as they become aware of their deception.
- Henry Cloud
But everything I have to give, I'll give to you
- Ray Lamontagne
She didn't want me; she wanted all of me. I didn't mind saying it. My girlfriend scared the crap out of me.
- T.J. Forrester
Miracles, Inc.: A Novel
And if insight were sufficient, if the inner life were the whole of life, their happiness has been assured.
- E M Forster
Don’t ever stray from yourself, in order to be close to someone that doesn’t have the courtesy to remind you of your worth, or the integrity of a gentleman to walk you home.
'Better to have loved and lost,' my ass.
Anyone parroting that little platitude had obviously never lost anyone of consequence.
Anyone parroting that little platitude had obviously never lost anyone of consequence.
- Nenia Campbell
Touched with Sight
He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don't. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us.
- Peter S. Beagle
A Fine and Private Place
I could probably write a book on the complexities of our relationship, on my constantly shifting emotions, my ever-changing mind, but let's just say that nothing is ever as black and white as it seems, that love is not only blind but pathetic too. It can make us into victims and fools, reduce us to the kind of people who infuriate us on soap operas, the kind you want to scream at for allowing the creep or bitch to walk all over them.
- J.M. Morris
Fiddleback: A Novel
Attention is not intention.
- Matthew Hussey
Love Life: How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and Live Happily
The thing about her is, she’s good-natured. He knew it the second he saw her standing by the parking meters. He could just tell from the soft way her belly looked. With women, you keep bumping against them, because they want different things, they’re a different race. Either they give, like a plant, or scrape, like a stone. In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman’s good nature.
- John Updike
Rabbit, Run
Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known.
- Mark Epstein
Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life - Insights from Buddhism and Psychotherapy
At least there's nothing scary about him and hopefully he doesn't see anything scary in me. We go way back, to summer camp. We KNOW each other. People I don't know just make me want to say YIKES! I'll take history over mystery any day of the week.
- Douglas Coupland
Shampoo Planet
I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.
- E M Forster
Howards End
With him everything is a test, affection is measured, that given weighed against that which has been received, and the balance, more often than not, disappointing him.
- S. J. Watson
Before I Go to Sleep
Exposure to erotically inclined stimuli immediately activates parts of a male brain that are associated with sexual desire. Being attracted to other women, however, doesn’t mean men would betray the trust they are given and harm the partnership with the women they love.
- Tatjana Ostojic
(Peter) If you don't share the lows, it seems you might stop sharing the highs as well.
- Nancy Woodruff
My Wife's Affair
Real relationships are the product of time spent, which is why so many of us have so few of them.
I arrived, I saw humans and I saw through their faces. Nothing ever changes but the light in their eyes. For I too have buried my demons today, without knowing what might remain beneath the face of tomorrow.
You can never recover from losing a person you love, but you can find a way to let it be part of your life rather than letting it take over every part of you
- Darien Gee
Friendship Bread
I wept for relationships not possible due to denial and dreams locked in the back of people’s minds, all of the bits of life that lay dormant until the babblings of televisions and nursing homes sweep them away. It makes me wonder how many of the dreams we had originally have already been forgotten.
- Christopher Hawke
Unnatural Truth
Robots are like Mars: they need
girls.
Boys won't do;
the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp
when they should kiss
and they're none too keen
on having things shoved inside them...
It's not a robot
until you put a girl inside. Sometimes
I feel like that.
A junkyard
the Company forgot to put a girl in.
girls.
Boys won't do;
the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp
when they should kiss
and they're none too keen
on having things shoved inside them...
It's not a robot
until you put a girl inside. Sometimes
I feel like that.
A junkyard
the Company forgot to put a girl in.
- Catherynne M. Valente
Melancholy of Mechagirl
It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted.
An apple tree is just like a person. In order to thrive, it needs companionship that's similar to it in some ways, but quite different than others.
- Jeffrey Stepakoff
The Orchard
It's early days. A few skeletons are bound to keep jumping out of the closet.
- Alan Moore
Watchmen
We are all deceivers to some degree. The difference between safe and unsafe “liars” is that safe people own their lies and see them as a problem to change as they become aware of their deception.
- Henry Cloud
But everything I have to give, I'll give to you
- Ray Lamontagne
She didn't want me; she wanted all of me. I didn't mind saying it. My girlfriend scared the crap out of me.
- T.J. Forrester
Miracles, Inc.: A Novel
And if insight were sufficient, if the inner life were the whole of life, their happiness has been assured.
- E M Forster
Don’t ever stray from yourself, in order to be close to someone that doesn’t have the courtesy to remind you of your worth, or the integrity of a gentleman to walk you home.
'Better to have loved and lost,' my ass.
Anyone parroting that little platitude had obviously never lost anyone of consequence.
Anyone parroting that little platitude had obviously never lost anyone of consequence.
- Nenia Campbell
Touched with Sight
He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don't. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us.
- Peter S. Beagle
A Fine and Private Place
I could probably write a book on the complexities of our relationship, on my constantly shifting emotions, my ever-changing mind, but let's just say that nothing is ever as black and white as it seems, that love is not only blind but pathetic too. It can make us into victims and fools, reduce us to the kind of people who infuriate us on soap operas, the kind you want to scream at for allowing the creep or bitch to walk all over them.
- J.M. Morris
Fiddleback: A Novel
Attention is not intention.
- Matthew Hussey
Love Life: How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and Live Happily
The thing about her is, she’s good-natured. He knew it the second he saw her standing by the parking meters. He could just tell from the soft way her belly looked. With women, you keep bumping against them, because they want different things, they’re a different race. Either they give, like a plant, or scrape, like a stone. In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman’s good nature.
- John Updike
Rabbit, Run
Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known.
- Mark Epstein
Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life - Insights from Buddhism and Psychotherapy
At least there's nothing scary about him and hopefully he doesn't see anything scary in me. We go way back, to summer camp. We KNOW each other. People I don't know just make me want to say YIKES! I'll take history over mystery any day of the week.
- Douglas Coupland
Shampoo Planet
I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.
- E M Forster
Howards End
With him everything is a test, affection is measured, that given weighed against that which has been received, and the balance, more often than not, disappointing him.
- S. J. Watson
Before I Go to Sleep
Exposure to erotically inclined stimuli immediately activates parts of a male brain that are associated with sexual desire. Being attracted to other women, however, doesn’t mean men would betray the trust they are given and harm the partnership with the women they love.
- Tatjana Ostojic
(Peter) If you don't share the lows, it seems you might stop sharing the highs as well.
- Nancy Woodruff
My Wife's Affair
Real relationships are the product of time spent, which is why so many of us have so few of them.
I arrived, I saw humans and I saw through their faces. Nothing ever changes but the light in their eyes. For I too have buried my demons today, without knowing what might remain beneath the face of tomorrow.
You can never recover from losing a person you love, but you can find a way to let it be part of your life rather than letting it take over every part of you
- Darien Gee
Friendship Bread
I wept for relationships not possible due to denial and dreams locked in the back of people’s minds, all of the bits of life that lay dormant until the babblings of televisions and nursing homes sweep them away. It makes me wonder how many of the dreams we had originally have already been forgotten.
- Christopher Hawke
Unnatural Truth
Robots are like Mars: they need
girls.
Boys won't do;
the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp
when they should kiss
and they're none too keen
on having things shoved inside them...
It's not a robot
until you put a girl inside. Sometimes
I feel like that.
A junkyard
the Company forgot to put a girl in.
girls.
Boys won't do;
the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp
when they should kiss
and they're none too keen
on having things shoved inside them...
It's not a robot
until you put a girl inside. Sometimes
I feel like that.
A junkyard
the Company forgot to put a girl in.
- Catherynne M. Valente
Melancholy of Mechagirl
It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted.
An apple tree is just like a person. In order to thrive, it needs companionship that's similar to it in some ways, but quite different than others.
- Jeffrey Stepakoff
The Orchard
It's early days. A few skeletons are bound to keep jumping out of the closet.
- Alan Moore
Watchmen