#la

The protagonist, Amanda, discusses her sex relationship with her husband, John Paul -- As long as it's done with honesty and grace, John Paul doesn't mind if I go to bed with other men. Or with other girls, as is sometimes my fancy. What has marriage got to do with it? Marriage is not a synonym for monogamy any more than monogamy is a synonym for ideal love. To live lightly on the earth, lovers and families must be more flexible and relaxed. The ritual of sex releases its magic inside or outside the marital bond. I approach that ritual with as much humility as possible and perform it whenever it seems appropriate. As for John Paul and me, a strange spurt of semen is not going to wash our love away. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#relationships #family

She wanted to ask him why they were all strangers who shared the same last name. ↗

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#family

Security comes first from inside of you. Then, if you are very lucky, you will be in a position to find other people who also possess that same sort of security, and build some sort of family or community as a team. ↗

— Anthony D. Ravenscroft

#polyamory #relationships #family

One must love God first, and only then can one love one's closest of kin and neighbors. We must not be idols to one another, for such is not the will of God. ↗

— Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

#eastern-orthodoxy #family #god #idolatry #love

What matters right now is this: we're each of us standing here, together, alive, together. ↗

— Beth Revis

#inspirational #family

How we take it for granted – those trivial conversations; those mundane moments that we think hold no meaning. We never realise how much we rely on the ordinariness of everyday life. When love is gone – when our entire world is gone – only then do we understand those moments are what we live for. ↗

— Dianna Hardy

#grief #life #living #loss #love

However self-sufficient we may fancy ourselves, we exist only in relation -- to our friend, family, and life partners; to those we teach and mentor; to our co-workers, neighbors, strangers; and even to forces we cannot fully conceive of, let alone define. In many ways, we are our relationships. ↗

— Derrick A. Bell

#self #self-sufficency #family

A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart. ↗

— Keri Hulme

#family #relationships #family

You dumb-ass ape, get your hand off me. What—are you the first in your family to be born without a tail? ↗

— Cherise Sinclair

#erotica #make-me-sir #family

She serves me a piece of it a few minutes out of the oven. A little steam rises from the slits on top. Sugar and spice - cinnamon - burned into the crust. But she's wearing these dark glasses in the kitchen at ten o'clock in the morning - everything nice - as she watches me break off a piece, bring it to my mouth, and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen, in winter. I fork the pie in and tell myself to stay out of it. She says she loves him. No way could it be worse. ↗

— Raymond Carver

#domestic-abuse #domestic-violence #family #fathers #love