Aravind

“And you and I didn’t get that, not because we didn’t deserve it, we just got dealt something else. But the people who did get that love, they grew up to be different from us. More secure. Maybe they’re not as shiny or successful as you and I feel we have to be. But it’s not because they’re not interesting. They just don’t feel they have to do the tap dance, you know? They don’t have to prove themselves all the time to be loved. Because they always were.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“Friendship is finding the people who were missing and the people that you needed, or maybe sometimes you didn’t know that you needed them. And then they come along and they fill that inexplicable void.”
― Elizabeth Day, Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict

“We grow in connection with others. Everyone needs to hear that other person's voice saying, 'I believe in you. I can see possibilities that you might not see quite yet. I imagine that something different can happen, in some form or another.' In therapy we say, 'Let's edit your story.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“Did you know,” the old woman said now, standing beside the grown-up Annie, “that a dog will go to a crying human before a smiling one? Dogs get sad when people around them get sad. They’re created that way. It’s called empathy. “Humans have it, too. But it gets blocked by other things—ego, self-pity, thinking your own pain must be tended to first. Dogs don’t have those issues.”
― Mitch Albom, The Next Person You Meet in Heaven