90 Intimacy Quotes

Intimacy is one of the most profound aspects of human relationships, intertwining emotional, physical, and spiritual connections. Whether it's the tender exchange between partners, the warm bond shared with a close friend, or the deep understanding between family members, intimacy plays a crucial role in our lives. To celebrate and explore these meaningful connections, we've curated a collection of the top 90 intimacy quotes. Each quote offers a glimpse into the beauty, complexity, and depth of intimacy, providing inspiration and reflection on this essential component of our interactions and experiences.

1. “The trick. . .is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.” - Wendy Wasserstein

2. “Put work into your dreams.” - Lesley D. Nurse

3. “My skin will never work like that again, so aware of the other person that I'm unsure where she ends and I begin. Never again. Never again will my skin be a thing that can so perfectly communicate; in losing my skin to the fire, I also lost the opportunity to make it disappear with another person.” - Andrew Davidson

4. “Jason once told me that eye contact is the most intimacy two people can have -- forget sex -- because the optic nerve is technically an extension of the brain, and when two people look into each other's eyes, it's brain-to-brain.” - Douglas Coupland

5. “For a knowledge of intimacy, localization in the spaces of our intimacy is more urgent than determination of dates.” - Gaston Bachelard

6. “I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.” - Raymond Carver

7. “Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.” - Raymond Carver

8. “Baudelaire writes: In certain almost supernatural inner states, the depth of life is entirely revealed in the spectacle, however ordinary, that we have before our eyes, and which becomes the symbol of it." Here we have a passage that designates the phenomenological direction I myself pursue. The exterior spectacle helps intimate grandeur unfold.” - Gaston Bachelard

9. “If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.” - Fernando Pessoa

10. “This is what intimacy does to us over time. That's what a long marriage can do: It causes us to inherit and trade each other's stories. (p.237)” - Elizabeth Gilbert

11. “They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

12. “Most beds aren't as intimate as people think they are.” - Malcolm Bradbury

13. “I hate solitude, but I'm afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself.” - Iris Murdoch

14. “It wasn't a thing I had consciously missed, but having it now reminded me of the joy of it; that drowsy intimacy in which a man's body is accessible to you as your own, the strange shapes and textures of it like a sudden extension of your own limbs.” - Diana Gabaldon

15. “When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into a room. Entering her.” - Ian McEwan

16. “The American appetite for loneliness impressed me, and there was something about this solitude that freed conversation. One night at a bar, I met a man, and within five minutes he explained that he had just been released from prison. Another drinker told me that his wife had passed away, and he had recently suffered a heart attack, and now he hoped that he would die within the year. I learned that there's no reliable small talk in America; at any moment a conversation can become personal.” - Peter Hessler

17. “Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people- there are many of them- who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it? They evoke our interests and affections, and keep the life of the spirit dawdling around them. Then they withdraw. When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour- flirting- and if carried far enough, it is punishable by law. But no law- not public opinion, even- punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable. Was she one of these?” - E.M. Forster

18. “his yellow eyes gazed at me possessively -- I wondered if he realized that the way he looked at me was far more intimate than copping a feel could ever be.” - Maggie Stiefvater

19. “there's nothing more intimate in life than simply being understood. And understanding someone else.” - Brad Meltzer

20. “Her definition of romance was absentminded intimacy, the way someone else's hand stray to your plate of food.I replied: no, that's just friendship; romance is always knowing exactly where that someone else's hands are. She smiled and said, there was a time I thought that way, too. But at the heart of the romance is the knowledge that those hands may wander off elsewhere, but somehow through luck or destiny or plain blind groping they'll find a way back to you, and maybe you'll be smart enough then to be grateful for everything that's still possible, in spit of your own weaknesses- and his.” - Kamila Shamsie

21. “The French, it seems to me, strike a happy balance between intimacy and reserve. Some of this must be helped by the language, which lends itself to graceful expression even when dealing with fairly basic subjects.... And there's that famously elegant subtitle from a classic Western.COWBOY: "Gimme a shot of red-eye."SUBTITLE: "Un Dubonnet, s'il vous plait."No wonder French was the language of diplomacy for all those years.” - Peter Mayle

22. “Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.” - Haruki Murakami

23. “It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.” - Jane Austen

24. “It's in giving yourself that you possess yourself” - Lou Andeas-Salome

25. “Though there are exceptions, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism tend to stress desirable states of consciousness, escaping the fretful, self-aware state of mind that so often makes everyday living a burden. For mystics from the Abrahamic faiths, however, the inward odyssey is also an upward odyssey, a quest for personal and vital communion with an infinite Being.” - David C. Downing

26. “The opposite of Loneliness is not Togetherness , It's Intimacy” - Richard Bach

27. “It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.” - Elizabeth Kostova

28. “See, don't just look. Your partner is so much more than their appearance. It's how kind their heart is, how lovely they smile, how much they care and have compassion, how generous and giving they are which becomes much more attractive.” - Suzan Battah

29. “I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? It is not quite true that you can't go home again. I have done it, coming back here. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places.” - Wallace Stegner

30. “The miraculous intimacy we shared did not have the time to generate into resentful emotional bondage” - Josephine Hart

31. “Among men, sex sometimes results in intimacy; among women, intimacy sometimes results in sex.” - Barbara Cartland

32. “Sex parties, alcohol and drugs lost their appeal to Sven after a while. Music never did, in his continual search for that sober connection--intimacy with one person over a long period of time, as opposed to periods of intimacy with a bunch of random faces.” - Jess C. Scott

33. “Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.” - Alain De Botton

34. “I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other's wounds; they repair the broken skin.” - Lauren Oliver

35. “Simply handing over your iPod to a friend, your blind date, or the total stranger sitting next to you on the plane opens you up like a book." (Steven Levy)” - Walter Isaacson

36. “Sound crazy? It may well be, but it is precisely in relationships of intimacy that your craziness (and mine) will be hardest to conceal. p.215” - Stephanie Dowrick

37. “God rewards every act of obedience to His Will.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

38. “Dare to be different. Represent your maker well and you will forever abide in the beautiful embrace of his loving arms.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

39. “Another way of remaining in intimacy with God is by remaining in His presence.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

40. “The presence of God is so important in the life of believers. There is abundance of all you need to make your life comfortable in His presence.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

41. “For the first time in his life he understood why the Bible called sex "knowing". Everything was different. Now he knew Dante. He'd known Dante. And wonder of wonders, Dante had known him right back.” - Damon Suede

42. “Yet velvet curtains, soft cheese, compelling work and boys who can run full-tilt—it isn't enough. And if it isn't, it isn't. There's no living with that. The world is made from our imagination; our eyes enliven it, as our hands give it shape. Wanting makes it thrive; meaning is what you put in, not what you extract. You only see what you are inclined to see, and no more. We have to make the new.” - Hanif Kureishi

43. “It is harder, usually, to find a person who wants to walk the streets of me, to taste the teas of my country, to... immigrate, you could say.” - Catherynne M. Valente

44. “Simon stopped breathing until her forefinger touched his nipple, and then his hand shot up to cover hers. "I want you," he said.Her eyes flicked downward, and her lips curved ever so slightly. "I know.""No," he groaned, pulling her closer. "I want to be in your heart. I want-" His entire body shuddered when their skin touched. "I want to be in your soul.” - Julia Quinn

45. “The best sex takes place in the mind first” - Jenna Jameson

46. “...we use intimacy to refer to the physical when it really pertains to the spiritual ..” - John Geddes

47. “Umm, well do I have to tell you how it’s done?” I tease, as I get on my knees and lean over him, . A wide smile spreads over his face as I straddle his lap.“Oh, are you taking dominance? I think I like that.” He grips his hands on my hips, pulling me as close as he can get.” - Annie Brewer

48. “...the religion of the heart is as intimate as a wish breathed to the night sky...” - John Geddes

49. “If I die this instant will you be more content with the morning news? Will your coffee taste better? I am not your fate. I am not your government…I am not your mother, not your father or your nightmare or your health. I am not a fence, not a wall. I am not the law or actuarial tables of your insurance broker. I am a woman with my guts loose in my hands, howling and it’s not because I committed hari-kiri. I suggest either you cook me or sew me back up. I suggest you walk into my pain as into the breaking waves of an ocean of blood, and either we will climb out together and walk away.” - Marge Piercy

50. “Sex isn't what I'm after. Sex is just what I can get.” - John Valentine

51. “The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.” - Tara Brach

52. “On the phone, it's about as intimate as it can get. The person's right in your ear. You got to be careful on the phone. You can leave yourself wide open” - Bono

53. “Linda Boone; Intimate Life Lessons: developing the intimacy with God you already have.” - Linda Boone

54. “oaking” seems like a crazy word in an intimacy book. Yet that is exactly what you want to do in your relational time with Him, you want to “soak in and soak up” His presence, “soak in and soak up” His love. Soaking is positioning yourself before God for the sole purpose of experiencing His presence and His love for you.” - Linda Boone

55. “Soaking is also positioning yourself for an encounter with God, to be with Him. You do the positioning, He does the encounter.” - Linda Boone

56. “When two people respect each other, the ability to be vulnerable and to reveal hurt feelings can create a powerful emotional connection that is the source of real intimacy and friendship.” - David D. Burns

57. “...you can't be intimate unless you're sensitive...” - John Geddes

58. “This morning could have been perfect. The cruel truth is they have never been. Give us loneliness or give us death.” - Sean Gabler

59. “This was our rhythm, our worship: give and take, gift and receive, honor and entrust. Making love to this man wasn’t just an expression of my feelings for him or a carnal, physical need—it was an offering.” - Rachael Wade

60. “What he was scared of was not that maybe she was a creature who survived by drinking other people's blood. No, it was that she might push him away.” - John Ajvide Lindqvist

61. “Happiness is hanging with friends who know you way more than you'd care to share.” - Todd Stocker

62. “Options abound world over, Options to choose from and be the best.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

63. “God takes us through life`s journey. Always nudging our Spirits to go for plus and shun the minus.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

64. “Be positive at all times! Leave out the negatives.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

65. “In your emotions: exercise Joy over sadness.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

66. “Ride higher in life unto the higher life.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

67. “Don`t descend to the lowest ebb.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

68. “Shout out for Joy! Don`t scream out in fear for victors shout and victims scream.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

69. “Move forward for forward is progress but circles are movement.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

70. “Forget yesterday, Act on Today and Get a hold on tomorrow.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

71. “Life is beautiful if you take the best option.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

72. “It turns out horrendous when you choose the wrong options.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

73. “Sow good seeds for a good yield.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

74. “Choices, options, decisions abound. Choose right, take the best option and decide well.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

75. “Build up your faith while starving the fears.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

76. “Avoid conflicts, Embrace cordiality.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

77. “Eschew evil and it`s machinations.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

78. “Have the best course for all your actions.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

79. “Accept responsibilities for all your actions. Learn from your past and your mistakes.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

80. “Don`t complain, Don`t compromise.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

81. “Always contend for the good!” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

82. “Stand out tall amidst challenges! Dwarf all irrelevant voices.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

83. “Shine forth your light before all beings.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

84. “Shun darkness and evil vices for they that embrace them wear off with time!” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

85. “Desire to give and not always receive.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

86. “You are created with a mandate! You have all you need to fulfill it.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

87. “Niets is zo mooi als de eerste eenzame minuten met iemand die jou zou kunnen beminnen en iemand die je zelf zou kunnen beminnen. Er bestaat niets dat zo stil is als die minuten, niets zo verzadigd met liefdelijke verwachting. In die paar minuten heeft men lief, niet in de vele die volgen. Nooit meer weet zij, zal zo iets schoons hen overkomen. Blijer zullen ze misschien worden, beter ook, en oneindig tevreden met elkaars lichaam. Maar nooit zal het meer zo schoon zijn.” - Stig Dagerman

88. “There was a real sense of comfort but at the same time it felt oddly tense. The feeling that every little things we said, these conversations, at any moment, they could stop being possible, and so they were precious, it was that feeling, and the sense of the miracle of this shared moment, here and now. Why were we so far apart, even when we are together? It was anice loneliness, like th sensation of washing your face with cold water.” - Banana Yoshimoto

89. “There's an intimacy in listening to somebody's lies, I've always thought--you learn more about someone from the things they wish were true than from the things that actually are.” - Jennifer Dubois

90. “We should have stories in common, I found myself thinking. We should have stories, and jokes no one understands, and memories that we know will stay alive because neither of us will let the other forget.” - Kamila Shamsie