Looking for author and title

[Alysse]

Hi. I am looking for an author and title for someone. All I know is this much:
The author described how every one that we meet becomes a part of us. It is like pressing a bar of silver to a bar of gold. With the naked eye one cannot tell that anything has happened, but a good chemist will tell you that flecks of the gold have entered the silver bar and vice versa. He goes on to describe how this is similar to what happens ever time you meet someone. He says that it is scary to imagine that everyone you ever hated is a part of you, but so is everyone you ever loved. The excerpt was about two paragraphs in length and I believe it was taken from a book he may have written. Does anyone know anything about this at all and where I could find it online or in a book? You can email me at [email protected]
Any help would greatly be appreciated! Thankyou!

[summer grace]

Maybe Tennyson-I recall he wrote a poem that has something like that.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

The only thing that springs to mind is Flann O'Brien's "Third Policeman" - there is a similar sort of theory in that book - but it's more to do with inanimate objects transferring molecules between them selves and people with repeated contact - A policeman gradually becomes a bicycle if I remember rightly. Strange book but well written and captivating.

[antiquary]

Alysse, I've seen this passage quoted as being from Theodore H White's The Mountain Road, but I don't vouch for the truth of that.

Xamonas, The Third Policeman is one of the best comic novels I've ever read. I recommend it to anyone who likes laughing.