Bianca

“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exists without the other. With too much distance, there can be no connection. But too much merging eradicates the separateness of two distinct individuals. Then there is no thing more to transcend, no bridge to walk on, no one to visit on the other side, no other internal world to enter. When people become fused - when two become one - connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with. Thus separateness is a recondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex”
― Esther Perel

“The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility. It’s remarkable to me how a sudden threat to the status quo (an affair, an infatuation, a prolonged absence, or even a really good fight) can suddenly ignite desire. There’s nothing like the fear of loss to make those old shoes look new again.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

“Only then did I understand. Only then did I see the crystal outline of my past and future, conceive of what was above me (innumerable star, incalculable space) and what was below me (miles of mindless dirt and stone). I understood that knowledge was a dwarfing obliterating, all-consuming thing, and to have it was to both be grateful and suffer greatly. I was a creature so small, trapped in some crevice of an indifferent universe. But now, I knew.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

“If a huge genetic gap separated us from our closest relative in the animal kingdom, we could justifiably celebrate our brilliance. We might be entitled to walk around thinking we’re distant and distinct from our fellow creatures. But no such gap exists. Instead, we are one with the rest of nature, fitting neither above nor below, but within.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry