Koko

“This false notion of the body as the testing ground for intimacy has long warped our understanding of what constitutes a romantic relationship. The measure of intimacy is not the quotient of friction between skin and skin, but something else entirely—something of the love and trust, the joy and ease that flow between two people as they inhabit that private world walled off from everything and everyone else.”
― Maria Popova, Figuring

“Shame on me for making such a mockery of myself. Blame it on my wounded pride. The fact is that my fear of being ridiculed is so intense I'd rather beat my critics to the punch. That's the epitome of cowardice.”
― Osamu Dazai, The Flowers of Buffoonery

“The richest relationships are often those that don’t fit neatly into the preconceived slots we have made for the archetypes we imagine would populate our lives—the friend, the lover, the parent, the sibling, the mentor, the muse. We meet people who belong to no single slot, who figure into multiple categories at different times and in different magnitudes. We then must either stretch ourselves to create new slots shaped after these singular relationships, enduring the growing pains of self-expansion, or petrify.”
― Maria Popova, Figuring

“I want to talk about everything with at least one person as I talk about things with myself.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky