Alain de Botton Quotes

Somewhere I just want to find someone that's going to love me forever no matter what; I want someone to show the inside of my head to. That thought keeps me going.

The only kind of love worth having is the kind that goes on living and laughing and fighting and loving.

Trouble is part of your life - if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.

The only thing I'm looking for in life is incredible passion and honest love, no matter what options are on the table. All I really operate on is the way I feel in my heart when it comes to love.

Sex isn't hard, but intimacy is terrifying.

When you're close to somebody, you can never really know how they're experiencing the world.

Parents become very good at not hearing the explicit words and listening instead to what the child means but doesn't yet know how to say: 'I'm lonely, in pain, frightened' - distress which then unfairly comes out as an attack on the safest, kindest, most reliable thing in the child's world: the parent.

Physical circumstances have very little to do with either our capacity to love or to attract love.

If you want to love a person, you should know that there are tears, and there can even be hatred inside of it. I think a love really includes all of that.

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?

One of the important things about marriage is to be accepted. Love is the basis of marriage, but there are many married people who have never felt accepted. Marriage is not a reformatory, and spouses need to reach out to each other without criticism or reservations. To live with a wife or husband who does not accept you is a dark valley to walk through.

Too much is how I love you, but too well is how I know you.

She nodded... and was about to turn away. Then, as if she thought better of it, she reached out and grabbed his arm. "Jack." "Yes?" "I. . ." she faltered. She knew what she wanted to tell him, but she couldn't bring herself to say the words. It turned out she didn't have to. Jack put a hand to his heart and nodded. "I feel the same way about you.

All of my books have an element of a man who is in love with somebody and needs them desperately, not just for procreation but for being able to fully unbosom himself. He only feels comfortable discussing things with women. Which is funny, because 80 percent of readers are women!

The main thing going on around intimacy is that we've developed a lot of strategies so we'll be a desirable package.

Love is an act of faith, not an exchange. Contradictions are what make love grow. Conflicts are what allow love to remain by our side.

Any good marriage involves a certain amount of play-acting.

I want you to be with me in the dark. To hold me. To keep loving me. To help me when I get scared. To come right to the edge and see what's there.

He sometimes wondered if she had become involved with him just so that she could cry in someone's arms. Maybe she can't cry alone, and that's why she needs me.

I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance were the light-minded companions of death and uncertainty. Jamie, thought, was something different. His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said. And if you will have me, then.

A deadness occurs in relationships when people are no longer willing to tell each other how they really feel. When people first fall in love they're more willing to do this because they're still getting to know each other and dependency has not yet set in. As soon as it does, though, people often stop sharing their true feelings out of fear of loss.

a lot of brothers don't understand. When it comes to making love, reciprocity is everything.

Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.

But I think if it's the right person, you wouldn't have to work so hard at intimacy. I think—hope—it would just happen naturally. Otherwise, opening up to the wrong person..." I made a face. "Like putting ammo in their hands.

The happiest moments in any affair take place after the loved one has learned to accommodate the lover and before the maddening personality of either party has emerged like a jagged rock from the receding tides of lust and curiosity.