Quotations

«What is true for one relationship, for one painting, is not true for another... each possesses its own strange inevitability that resists us and we can never finally know what it is we are doing until the work is finished... It is as if the picture paints itself through us, the story tells itself through us, has a larger existence of which we know nothing.»

«We measure success and depth by length of time, but it is possible to have a deep relationship that doesn't always stay the same»

«What people say behind your back is your standing in the community.»

«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.»

«Whenever a friend succeeds a little something in me dies.»

«We need others. We need others to love and we need to be loved by them. There is no doubt that without it, we too, like the infant left alone, would cease to grow, cease to develop, choose madness and even death.»

«What is important to a relationship is a harmony of emotional roles and not too great a disparity in the general level of intelligence»

«When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.»

«What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.»

«We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them»