A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole before an immense sky.
Rainer Maria Rilke
I sometimes suspect that we really do not listen to one
another because Shakespeare's friends and lovers never
quite hear what the other is saying, which is part of the
ironical truth that Shakespeare largely invented us.
Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence
Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence
