Nadine Gordimer Quotes

Ted needs someone to be there 100% of the time. He thinks that's love. It's not love - it's babysitting.

What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.

He does not possess wealth; it possesses him.

I want somebody who's gonna need me.

I tell people my only successful long-term relationship was with Jim Packard. He was my rock. I didn't realize how codependent I was.

The nice girl meets a guy and acts like she joined a cult. In the beginning, a guy might ask her what she likes. The nice girl makes the mistake of shrugging her shoulders and saying: 'I like anything you like.'

Ali always said I would be nothing without him. But what would he have been without me?

When you can't have someone but you're not willing to accept that, you try harder and become more extreme about it. Either you win the person back or you drive him away.

Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.

I would describe my relationship with my couch as symbiotic - others would describe it as dangerous.

When he was on the streets, I was consumed with Nic. I was obsessed with him to the point that I could barely function.

I keep letting you back in. How can I explain myself? As painful as this thing has been, I just can't be with no one else.

No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me.

... we always love best the people who need us.

I need you,ʺ said Lissa. ʺI hear that from women a lot,ʺ said Adrian.

My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.

The ring always believes that the finger lives for it.

If I am attached to another person because I cannot stand on my own two feet, he or she may be a life saver, but the relationship is not one of love.

Our instructors do not understand how it is. To be bound to someone in such a way. They are too old, too out of touch with their emotions. They no longer remember what it is to live and breathe within the world. They think it simple to pit any two people against each other. It is never simple. The other person becomes how you define your life, how you define yourself. They become as necessary as breathing. Then they expect the victor to continue on without that. It would be like pulling the Murray twins apart and expecting them to be the same. They would be whole but not complete.

I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop But if baby I'm the bottom, you're the top.

A person shows signs of clutching on too fast, of being needy, of not hearing the word "no," of jealousy, of guarding you and your freedom. But the signs can be so small they skitter right past you. Sometimes they dance past, looking satiny, something you should applaud. Someone's jealousy can make you feel good. Special. But it's not even about you. It's about a hand that is already gripping. It's about their need, circling around your throat

I knew what love was supposed to be: obsession with undertones of nausea.

…I think,' concluded Anne, hitting on a very vital truth, 'that we always love best the people who need us.

It's strange, isn't it, how the idea of belonging to someone can sound so great? It can be comforting, the way it makes things decided. We like the thought of being held, until it's too tight. We like that certainty, until it means there's no way out. And we like being his, until we realize we're not ours anymore.

Every relationship is fundamentally a power struggle, and the individual in power is whoever likes the other person less.