David Rakoff Quotes

We’re creatures of contact regardless of whether/ we kiss or we wound. Still, we must come together.

How we need another soul to cling to.

I am not a perfect friend, and it is impossible not to rebuff or be rebuffed if you move about the world.

One of the oldest aches in the bones of humanity is loneliness. I mean it's one of the things that goes way back; loneliness is not good for the world. And so, whoever you are, gay or straight, it is totally normal, natural, and healthy to want somebody to go through life with. It's central to our humanity.

They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?

The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.

Our phones do play to our natural nervousness about being vulnerable to each other, but that doesn't mean that we can't we can't pull ourselves together, and say - we need to talk to each because it's in conversation, the most human and humanizing thing that we do, that empathy is born, that intimacy is born, that relationship is born.

I really like feeling connected to people and feeling like I have a good, solid sense of empathy.

Because that's what intimacy is: It's a willingness to be vulnerable, a willingness to bite my tongue and a willingness to set an example of what I believe in.

I like being alone and I think this movie, as much as it is an investigation of connection and people bonding, I also think it's just as much about loneliness.

My best advice would be that you have to be vulnerable with each other. Like, everyone says you have to be honest, you have to communicate; like, yes, of course, but you gotta be willing to be vulnerable.

We all need somebody to talk to. It would be good if we talked... not just pitter-patter, but real talk. We shouldn't be so afraid, because most people really like this contact; that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable.

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.

I find the closer you get to people, the harder it is to satirise them.

If we dare to come closer to our fellow human beings, we will be able to see and understand them better.

Flaws make us all human, and you're rooting for characters because of those flaws. It's ageless if you're interested in relationships and the way people can or can't relate to each other.

All our relationships are person-to-person. They involve people seeing, hearing, touching, and speaking to each other; they involve sharing goods; and they involve moral values like generosity and compassion.

My mother is not a model. She is not perfect. That awareness is part of learning to love someone. Predicting the actions of someone is an act of love. We persist, even when we get it wrong. That's the beauty of love.

Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.

Intimacy seems to be one of the major highs of life, whether it's getting to know yourself in a deeper way, or your partner, or the world and the society that you live in.

In this world, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support, and to reach consensus. They try to protect themselves from others' attempts to push them away.

I think that sometimes we open our hearts a little more easily to animals than we do to each other.

I want to play real people. Real women. I want to be where the fun is - closer to humanity.

It's so much easier to like people, and to let people in, to trust them until they prove that you should do otherwise. The alternative is being an iceberg.

Because you know what happens when you say 'hello' or 'good morning?' You make a connection. And isn't that what being human is all about?