The power of affinity lies in its mystery: the way it stands outside everything logical; you step into a crowded room and see a stranger, and somehow you feel you know her better than you know the friends you came with.
Interpretation
Affinity can create a deep connection with strangers that feels stronger than with those we know well.
This quote reflects on the profound and often inexplicable connections we can feel with others, particularly strangers. Pico Iyer expresses that affinity transcends logical understanding and can create an immediate sense of familiarity and emotional bond, even in a crowded space where one might expect to feel isolated or disconnected. It suggests that the essence of relationships can be rooted in feelings and intuitions that aren’t always clear or rational.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of human connections at a community event.
Quitting, for me, means not giving up, but moving on; changing direction not because something doesn’t agree with you, but because you don’t agree with something. It’s not a complaint, in other words, but a positive choice, and not a stop in one’s journey, but a step in a better direction. Quitting-whether a job or a habit-means taking a turn so as to be sure you’re still moving in the direction of your dreams.
I think one reason, obviously, that I spend so much time in one place is that I've been lucky enough to travel a lot, and now there are other different, invisible trains that are more interesting to me.
I've never meditated in my life. I don't practice yoga nor any religion. I'm a tourist on the realm of stillness.
We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate.
I'm no Buddhist monk, and I can't say I'm in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I've written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn't want or need, not all I did.
The one thing perhaps that technology hasn't always given us is a sense of how to make the wisest use of technology.
He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.
We all miss you so much. It just never ends. It feels like we were all wounded in your battle, Caroline. I miss you. I love you.
This person had arrived, he had illuminated her, he had ensorcelled her with notions of miracle and beauty, he had both understood and misunderstood her, he had married her, he had broken her heart, he had looked upon her with those sad and hopeless eyes, he had accepted his banishment, and now he was gone. What a stark and stunning thing was life- that such a cataclysm can enter and depart so quickly, and leave such wreckage behind!
Sons branch out, but one woman leads to another.
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
Isn't that the problem? That women have been swindled for centuries into substituting adornment for love, fashion (as it were) for passion?
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