Interaction Quotes

“I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don’t know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness.”
― Anaïs Nin

“The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world.”
― Ocean Vuong

“People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Blair picks me up from LAX and mutters this under her breath as she drives up the onramp. She says, "People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles." Though that sentence shouldn't bother me, it stays in my mind for an uncomfortably long time. Nothing else seems to matter. Not the fact that I'm eighteen and it's December and the ride on the plane had been rough and the couple from Santa Barbara, who were sitting across from me in first class, had gotten pretty drunk. Not the mud that had splattered on the legs of my jeans, which felt kind of cold and loose, earlier that day at an airport in New Hampshire. Not the stain on the arm of the wrinkled, damp shirt I wear, a shirt which looked fresh and clean this morning. Not the tear on the neck of my gray argyle vest, which seems vaguely more eastern than before, especially next to Blair's clean tight jeans and her pale-blue shirt. All of this seems irrelevant next to that one sentence. It seems easier to hear that people are afraid to merge than "I'm pretty sure Muriel is anorexic" or the singer on the radio crying out about magnetic waves. Nothing else seems to matter to me but those ten words. Not the warm winds, which seem to propel the car down the empty asphalt freeway, or the faded smell of marijuana which still faintly permeates Blaire's car. All it comes down to is the fact that I'm a boy coming home for a month and meeting someone whom I haven't seen for four months and people are afraid to merge.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero

“Relationships may become wrecked by a quirky syndrome: the “Ain't broke, don't fix”-syndrome. When there is no interaction in the neural network and no breakthrough into the mind but only a shallow skin experience, living together might be very torturous. If a heartfelt bond has not been molded, nothing can be broken and thus nothing needs to be fixed. (“I wonder what went wrong.”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Let us not wait until the specter of solitude and isolation crawls into the alleys of our lives. Let us not the veiled threat of despair thrust us into oppression through our deficiency in interaction, and expand the frailty and the anxiety of our existence. Let us reach out and talk instead and use an authentic language in an unambiguous wording, and connect the dots, without fear. ("Words had disappeared”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Relatedness and interaction between individuals may have lost their drive and liability. In our contemporary “brave new world", traditional trust or generous receptiveness has been replaced by ‘security devices’ and ‘safety gadgets’. (“Could we leave the door unlocked?”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“The woman recovering from abuse or other stressful life situations may feel she's in no way in charge of anything, least of all her own world. She faces the horse with trepidation. The horse senses the fear and becomes tense and concerned. The wise instructor starts small. The woman is handed a soft brush and sent to fuss over the horse. It's pointed out that if she stands close to the animal, she will be out of range of a well-aimed kick. She is warned to watch for tell-tale signs of fear in herself and the horse. She's warned to keep her feet out from under the horse's stomping hoof. They're both allowed to back away and regroup and try again until they reach an accord regarding personal space. Calm prevails, and within a few minutes, hours or sessions, interaction becomes friendship. It happens almost every time a woman is allowed enough time and space to work through the situation.

So a woman whose daily life is overwhelming her learns to step back. Is this a cure for her endless problems? Of course not. Simple is not simplistic.”
― Joanne M. Friedman, Horses in the Yard

“I wasn’t a nerd, mind you, but I’d spent a lot of my youth studying Epics, so I’d had limited experience with social interaction. I mixed with ordinary people about the same way that a bucket of paint mixed with a bag of gerbils.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Firefight

“Having to talk to people was the one thing, but soliciting conversation was something else. If I acted squirmy or didn't make eye contact, they would want to know what was wrong, and I would have to say, Nothing, since nothing really was wrong. Nothing is an easy thing to feel but a difficult thing to express”
― Hilary Thayer Hamann, Anthropology of an American Girl

“The concept of randomness and coincidence will be obsolete when people can finally define a formulation of patterned interaction between all things within the universe.”
― Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident], Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza

“The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics and genocide. Those collisions created reverberations that have still not died down after many centuries, and that are actively continuing in some of the world's most troubled areas.”
― Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

“Know that you get second chances so that you may change the art of your interaction, not so that others might finally treat you with the loving respect you deserve (and you do deserve loving respect).”
― Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence

“Perhaps the individual is so viable a god because he can actually understand the ceremonial significance of the way he is treated, and quite on his own can respond dramatically to what is proffered him. In contacts between such deities there is no need for middlemen; each of these gods is able to serve as his own priest.”
― Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-To-Face Behavior

“Given that all of the issues that face us demand and understanding of complexity, interrelationship, and nuance, the ability to seek and understand context is nothing less than a collective survival skill.”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“Since the Internet has conquered human interaction, let me deepen my subscription
to introversion.”
― Makuochukwu Okigbo

“Our clothes affect the way we think, feel and act. Consequently, they greatly determine how people respond to you.”
― Cindy Ann Peterson, My Style, My Way: Top Experts Reveal How to Create Yours Today

“We mustn’t withdraw from human interaction because it can be difficult. It keeps us grounded and helps us to grow through real and challenging situations. We do not need to decide which community to belong to. We just live life to the best of our ability and follow our interests and we will find ourselves within a community of people perfect for our growth.”
― Donna Goddard, Love's Longing

“When we don’t think we look good, it changes the way we interact with people.”
― Cindy Ann Peterson, My Style, My Way: Top Experts Reveal How to Create Yours Today

“This tedious letter to you . . .
what is one life to another?”
― Ruth Stone, In the Next Galaxy

“A group’s preference for specific activities is one important way values emerge in a culture. The leisure habits of the rich are framed as activities to see and to be seen at. They prove exercise, but no exertion; they are a courtly site of sociality and pleasure.”
― Mary Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design

“It is unfortunate that some of us worry about losing data but not our thoughts about the data. If we believed in the premises of sociology—that interaction is patterned, that people share meanings, beliefs, and behaviors—then we would trust that the patterns we missed while we were writing will still be there when we return to the field. We are more likely to forget our insights into what we observed.”
― Sherryl Kleinman, Emotions and Fieldwork

“Van egy kérdés, amit ha feltesznek, márpedig természetesen újra és újra felteszik, nevezetesen, hogy
miként hat a fényképezés meg az írás egymásra,
egyszerűen ostobának érzem magam. És bizony semmi nem
vált ki annyi ingerültséget, mint amikor látványosan megkérdőjeleződik a tudásunk valami olyasmiről, amit elvileg
nálunk jobban senki nem tudhat. A legőszintébb, zsigeri válaszom az lenne, hogy: Sehogy. Nem tudom. Mi köze hozzá.
Ön él szexuális életet? És tudja, ez miként hat a táplálkozására? Nem tudja? Pedig hat rá. Higgye el nekem, hogy hat.
De hát ezt persze nem mondja az ember. Helyette inkább hebegek-habogok valamit a szövegekben megjelenő fotográfusokról meg az albumok asszociációra épülő szerkezetéről.
És legnagyobb döbbenetemre kielégítőnek találják a választ.”
― Attila Bartis, Az ​eltűnt idő nyoma

“No matter how things turn up in front of you, if you keep interacting with everything you hear in a passionate manner, you will be in pain every time. Because the real power in every assembly is to look at everything from a logical view, and to control yourself whatever happens or was said in front of you .... Because if the words of others dominate you, this means that others control you .... Give everything, time is your ally and a medicine for every disease.....”
― Wahid Bhat

“When fear is within the will of life, the life is blinded by the excessive shivering of its fingers, and when the fear is outside the crucible of will, life is enlightened by the light of perception, so fear and will are on the line, whether it is a sound look and a decent life.”
― Wahid Bhat

“Politics is simply the interaction between two or more people. However, it's crucial for every politician to understand the interaction between people and nature. That is to say, economics is the backbone of politics.”
― Mwanandeke Kindembo

“It’s easy to make people think. Just smile at them and they’ll wonder what that was all about.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Effective communication is eighty percent listening, which you can’t do if your head doesn’t shut up long enough for your mouth to do that same.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“It is possible to set boundaries provided that you prioritize your own self-care. To protect ourselves in their presence, we first have to understand the way they think and manipulate. This will give us insight into their agendas, their exploitative ways of approaching the world, and the essential tools needed to safely exit interactions, friendships, and relationships with them.”
― Shahida Arabi, The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators [Standard Large Print 16 Pt Edition]

“Keep interactions as short as possible; you can be cordial, but do not engage. Narcissists are master provocateurs who will subject you to dizzying diversion tactics to make you feel off-center and off-­balance. That’s why you must understand when you are being manipulated and stay focused on your real goals. If your goal is to do your best work at your job, then you must do everything in your power to stay focused on that goal and channel your energy into producing high-quality work.”
― Shahida Arabi, The Highly Sensitive Person's Guide to Dealing with Toxic People: How to Reclaim Your Power from Narcissists and Other Manipulators [Standard Large Print 16 Pt Edition]