They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.

If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.

It wasn't a thing I had consciously missed, but having it now reminded me of the joy of it; that drowsy intimacy in which a man's body is accessible to you as your own, the strange shapes and textures of it like a sudden extension of your own limbs.

The words —I Love You' kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.

I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.

Leaders gather scattered people with the positive influence of intimacy while misleaders scatter gathered people with the negative influence of intimidation.

Real intimacy is a product of solitude.

Hillary lies sleepless in her bed. It's spooky in here, she thinks, and she turns on the ceiling light to supplement the night light. Jonathon whickers in his sleep, and reminds her of his guinea pig.

Our daily existence requires both closeness and distance, the wholeness of self, the wholeness of intimacy.

Though all humans need both intimacy and independence, women tend to focus on the first and men on the second. It is as if their lifeblood ran in different directions.

After the meal, the couple retired to their bedroom. Man and wife don't usually lie together in the daytime, but when he went outside to close the shutters, she did not protest. As soon as he put his arm around her she was aroused, like an adolescent- since a woman who has not been pregnant, remains virginal forever.

The human soul is not framed for continued proximity, and the result of this enforced neighbourhood is often an appalling loneliness for which the rules of the game forbid assuagement.

The female covers her breasts, and then proceeds to redefine their shape with a brassiere. This sexual signaling device may be padded or inflatable, so that it not only reinstates the concealed shape, but also enlarges it, imitating in this way the breast swelling that occurs during sexual arousal.

Intimacy begins with oneself. It does no good to try to find intimacy with friends, lovers and family if you are starting out from alienation and division within yourself.

Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us.

When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.

No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well,-parent, child, brother, sister, intimate.

A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.

All couples must bear the strain of getting acquainted, having been, up to then, merely intimate.

If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good-breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.