278 Quotes About Strangers

Upon reflection, I marvel that no one saw through me enough to bundle me off to the nearest mental institution. The fact that it didn't happen depended less on my being a good actress than the fact that I was surrounded, as I had been all my life, by strangers.

You’d think there’d be a word for it. That city-living intimacy where you know the minutia of their routines, rituals, and clothes but absolutely nothing else.

Now you’re just a stranger, with all my secrets.

I don’t expect you to like me. But I hope you can tolerate me

You have to believe that people will be open to your advances. We psych ourselves out of approaching a potential BFF or emailing a role model because it seems far-fetched that they'd want to be friends or network with us in return. But, as has always been the case this year, people are happy to make new connections.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, a Russian writer, a writer of whom I greatly admire once said, ‘We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word is spoken.

Most of the strangers we fall in love with seem to act as strangers rather than being strangers.

Thank you," I said bravely, dropping the syllables cleanly, like marbles, and secretly full of the most pathetic pride imaginable. I had spoken to strangers.

. . .sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?"“Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.