I looked at her for too long, and with too much intensity in my eyes. The way people never look at people any more. I wanted her in every sense. To want is to lack. That is what it means.—Matt Haig, How to Stop Time. Highlighted
Why would a soul want a body? … A soul can’t touch.—Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think. Highlighted
We expect others to be honest and open with their intentions, especially romantically, but how many people are we keeping on the back burner?—Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think. Highlighted
When was the last time you leapt out of your comfort zone to tell someone you care about them? When was the last time you definitively asked someone on a date?—Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think. Highlighted
We don’t allow others to be messy, but we expect them to lend a comforting shoulder when we’re in pieces.—Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think. Highlighted
You’re not going to be ready for the love of your life when they show up. … And if you deny yourself that relationship because you think you need to do more work beforehand, you’re denying yourself the best growing tool there is.—Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think. Highlighted
We can’t choose whose wreckage can [change the parts of ourselves and our worlds we can’t]. We all start as strangers, but we forget that we rarely choose who ends up a stranger, too.—Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think. Highlighted
We find people irrationally compelling. We find souls made of the same stuff ours are.—Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think. Highlighted
You can be more or less attracted to someone, more or less compatible, but choosing to love and appreciate someone, regardless of those variables is a constant that you can choose.—Brianna Wiest, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think. Highlighted
This might sound sadistic but it’s true; people want to see their sadness reflected back at them because it makes them feel connected to something and connection is the best salve for sadness. The irony is we’re usually at our most disconnected when we’re grieving, either because we’ve lost the person we felt closest to or because we’ve withdrawn from others in order to protect ourselves from future pain, or to protect them from our “brokenness.”—Hazel Hayes, Out of Love. Highlighted
A breakup is like a death without a funeral.—Hazel Hayes, Out of Love. Highlighted
You just learn to accept that people have their own fucked-up ways of coping with shit. And you decide whether you’re willing to put up with it or not.—Hazel Hayes, Out of Love. Highlighted
Now, I’m not the kind of girl to gush over weddings, but the marriage part—the idea of two flawed people being somehow perfect for one another, the odds of finding another human who can tolerate your specific brand of shit, and whose shit you can tolerate too—I think that’s pretty special.—Hazel Hayes, Out of Love. Highlighted
She’s twenty-three years old, and she’s doing something absolutely stupid, and she’s allowed to do absolutely stupid things whenever she wants, and the rest doesn’t have to matter right now.—Casey McQuiston, One Last Stop. Highlighted
Attachment principles teach us that most people are only as needy as their unmet needs. When their emotional needs are met, … they usually turn their attention outward. This is … the dependency paradox.—Amir Levine, Attached. Highlighted
This is an important lesson for someone with an anxious attachment style: If you just wait a little longer before reacting and jumping to conclusions, you will have an uncanny ability to decipher the world around you and use it to your advantage.—Amir Levine, Attached. Highlighted
…Studies have found that faced with a stressful life event, such as divorce, the birth of a severely disabled child, or military trauma, avoidants’ defenses are quick to break down and they then appear and behave just like people with an anxious attachment style.—Amir Levine, Attached. Highlighted
… Studies show that once we become attached to someone, the two of us form one physiological unit. Our partner regulates our blood pressure, our heart rate, our breathing, and the levels of hormones in our blood. … The emphasis on differentiation that is held by most of today’s popular psychology … does not hold water from a biological perspective.—Amir Levine, Attached. Highlighted
If you want to take the road to independence and happiness, first find the right person to depend on and travel down it with them.—Amir Levine, Attached. Highlighted
Getting attached means that our brain becomes wired to seek the support of our partner by ensuring the partner’s psychological and physical proximity. If our partner fails to reassure us, we are programmed to continue our attempts to achieve closeness until the partner does.—Amir Levine, Attached. Highlighted
How does the love keep swelling in the cavities of our frail bodies, how do these husks hold so much jagged pleasure in their parched split skins?—Ellen Bass, Mules of love. Highlighted
there are mornings when I wake, my lips swollen from your kisses, my body bruised and fragrant as grasses on which lions have lain, and for a full bereft moment, I cannot, for the life of me, remember why I left.—Ellen Bass, Mules of love. Highlighted
Bring me your pain, love. Spread it out like fine rugs, silk sashes, warm eggs, cinnamon and cloves in burlap sacks.—Ellen Bass, Mules of love. Highlighted
And when he’s dying— even if I go to him—I’ll be little more than a dumb bouquet, spilling my scent.—Ellen Bass, Mules of love. Highlighted
Those who can, cling to their mates, an ear pressed to those neighboring lungs like a stethoscope, hoping to catch a ride on the steady sleep breath of the other, to be carried like a seed on the body of the one who is able.—Ellen Bass, Mules of love. Highlighted
“The seeker has a confirmation bias, looking for positive signs and discounting the negative ones,” Baumeister said. “If there’s ambivalence, it’s going to prolong the hope, because there are enough positives to seize on and overinterpret. The negatives you can brush aside.”—Lisa A. Phillips, Unrequited. Highlighted
When we’re caught up in unsatisfied desire, we can write the story of our love ... This is fundamentally a creative act, often full of pleasure at first ... yet being together means facing reality, which will probably fall short of the self-centered fantasy.—Lisa A. Phillips, Unrequited. Highlighted
I used to think the only way a man could hurt you was by lashing out, but it turns out the absence of action can cause just as much pain.—Hazel Hayes, Out of Love. Highlighted
But, you know, that feeling? When you wake up in the morning and you have somebody to think about? Somewhere for hope to go? Even when it’s bad, it’s good.—Casey McQuiston, One Last Stop. Highlighted
had I not been struck by the upside-down image of my frilly ankle socks, once white, now turning bright red. Like a cartoon animal who doesn’t fall until they notice that the ground is gone, the sight of my own blood made me suddenly aware of the searing pain in my heels. I tore off my shiny black shoes and peeled the blood-soaked socks from my feet before righting myself and continuing my search barefoot.—Hazel Hayes, Better by Far. Highlighted
I read over and over this brief exchange, wringing it dry for hidden meaning. And for the next few hours I rest easy knowing where you are, who you’re with, and that I’m on your mind.—Hazel Hayes, Better by Far. Highlighted
your fingers lifting my mouth to yours, the way we moved together, the bruises on my belly from our hip bones grinding.—Hazel Hayes, Better by Far. Highlighted
But quick as memories come, they are rewritten, altered by the knowledge that you knew then how little time we had. And soon this knowing starts to seep through my whole mind, like ink in water, tainting every memory I have of you, darkening the tone of my whole childhood. I thought that I had mourned you fully. That there would be no more mourning left to do. But this is a fresh, graveside grief, raw and untamed, that doesn’t so much slip under the door as burst through it, demanding my attention.—Hazel Hayes, Better by Far. Highlighted
If you have feelings for someone, and you don’t let that person know, you’re lying with your silence. Be direct. It saves so much trouble and regret.—Derek Sivers, How to Live. Highlighted
Projecting perfection onto someone is not love. You say “I love you” but really mean “I love this”.—Derek Sivers, How to Live. Highlighted
Anybody can look at you. It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.—John Green, Turtles All the Way Down. Highlighted
Bram was right: people really are like houses with vast rooms and tiny windows. And maybe it’s a good thing, the way we never stop surprising each other.—Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. Highlighted
