Amy Bloom (born 1953) is an American writer and psychotherapist. She has been nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
they danced as though they'd been waiting all their lives for each song.
Some people are your family no matter when you find them, and some people are not, even if you are laid, still wet and crumpled, in their arms.
You cannot fake effort; talent is great, but perseverance is necessary.
The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you.
All intimacy is rare-that's what makes it precious.
Boundaries are the lines we draw that mark off our autonomy and that of other people, that protect our privacy and that of others. Boundaries allow for intimate connection without dissolving or losing one's sense of self.
To hold happiness is to hold the understanding that the world passes away from us, that the petals fall and the beloved dies. No amount of mockery, no amount of fashionable scowling will keep any of us from knowing and savoring the pleasure of the sun on our faces or save us from the adult understanding that it cannot last forever.
Is it better for a woman to marry a man who loves her than a man she loves.
I have made the best and happiest ending that I can in this world, made it out of the flax and netting and leftover trim of someone else's life, I know, but made it to keep the innocent safe and the guilty punished, and I have made it as the world should be and not as I have found it.
In a true partnership, the kind worth striving for, the kind worth insisting on, and even, frankly, worth divorcing over, both people try to give as much or even a little more than they get. 'Deserves' is not the point. And 'owes' is certainly not the point. The point is to make the other person as happy as we can, because their happiness adds to ours. The point is -- in the right hands, everything that you give, you get.
Men do not know what they do not know, and women should not tell them.
Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner.
The library is every child's lighthouse. It is every person's sanctuary. It is every town and county's fortress in the face of ignorance, intrusion and bad behavior.
It is a wonderful, moving, heart-filling experience to sit with the man or woman you love and your beloved children and know that all are happy to be just where they are with each other and loving one another. This doesnt happen very often.
Everyone has two memories. The one you can tell and the one that is stuck to the underside of that, the dark, tarry smear of what happened.
You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.
It takes something to get married: nerve, hope, a strong desire to make a certain statement - and it takes something to stay married: more hope, determination, a sense of humor, and needs that are best met by being in a pair.
Intimacy is being seen and known as the person you truly are.
I do not say what I feel, and people often take that for shyness, even kindness.
I met Jay Jonhson. I won him the way poor people occasionally win the lottery: Shameless perseverance and embarrassingly dumb luck, and every time I see one of those sly, toothless, beaten-down souls on TV holding a winning ticket, I think, Go, team.