O. Henry Quotes

Marriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistuinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. How do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebody—so utterly well known and so thoroughly ever-present that you become an almost invisible necessity, like air?

Everything's a lot easier when you work with someone you know just about as well as you know yourself.

Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole.

My life and his were twisted into a single strand. Cut one, and you cut both. If he were gone, I would not be able to live through that. If I were gone, he wouldn't live through it, either.

Friendship is anything that you get something out of that is very, very important to you. And that's why there are those people who are so close to you that you don't know how you'd live without them. And they are the ones that, even if they do something terrible, you have to keep. Otherwise, you're just going to be lost without them.

He's like a drug for you, Bella. I see that you can't live without him now. It's too late. But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun.

We deserve each other, Luis … and I need you just as much as you need me. Hold me.” He steps closer, but hesitates. “If I do, mi chava, I can’t promise I’ll be able to let you go.

I love you. You are closest to my heart, closer than any other human being. You are my extension. You are my prayer. You are my belief in God. For better or worse you inherit me.

The world is shrinking together; it is finding itself neighbor to itself in strange, almost magic degree.

Why don’t we break up? I guess I stay with her because she stays with me. And that’s not an easy thing to do.

I think I can live without you, but it won't be any kind of life.

Right now, I wish I’d stayed because I want you at my side. That sounds pretty selfish, but I don’t mean it that way. You just never needed me that way; I said it to you once as I was leaving—that you love me, but you don’t need me. You don’t lean. But I admire that about you, and I could use some of your strength right now.

He blinked a few times, each motion so slow that he was never quite sure if he’d get his eyes open again. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Funny how he was only just realizing it. Funnier still that he couldn’t seem to summon any concern for her maidenly sensibilities. She might be blushing. He couldn’t tell. It was too dark to see. But it didn’t matter. This was Honoria. She was a good egg. A sensible egg. She wouldn’t be scarred forever by the sight of his chest.

We tried so hard. We were always trying to help each other. But not because we were helpless. He needed to get things for me, just as I needed to get things for him. It gave us purpose. Sometimes I would ask him for something that I did not even want, just to let him get it for me. We spent our days trying to help each other help each other. I would get his slippers. He would make my tea. I would turn up the heat so he could turn up the air conditioner so I could turn up the heat.

And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.

But a mother-son relationship is not a coequal one, is it? He is lonely with only you just as you are lonely with only him.

Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin's bow, which draws one voice out of two separate strings.

There are moments when I would love to fall asleep with my head on somebody's shoulder, just because I was so used to that for so long.

Maybe that's what real friendship is -- getting so used to people that you need to be annoyed by them.

To the vulgar eye, few things are wonderful that are not distant

As you do with any band you're in, you get to know everyone too well all too soon. When you're crammed into a small space, proximity leads to familiarity.

There is an interconnectedness among members that bonds the family, much like mountain climbers who rope themselves together when climbing a mountain, so that if someone should slip or need support, he's held up by the others until he regains his footing.

The ways suited to confidence are familiar to me, but not those that are suited to familiarity.

Intimacy requires an ability to both merge and be separate, to come together and be apart, like oscillating on a giant swing from oneness to separateness, creating a constant rhythm.

If you died it would be like my bones had been removed. No one would know why, but I would collapse.