Quotes & Sayings About A Single Friend

Children's books: Every time you find the right, the necessary, book for a child - a book about sadness overcome, unfairness battled, hearts mended - you perform the best kind of magic ... every time you give just the right book to just the right child, you're saying, "You, my friend, have potential." That is a gift. That is a miracle. And that is what you do, each of you, every single day. — Katherine Applegate

Ceremony leads her bigots forth, prepared to fight for shadows of no worth. While truths, on which eternal things depend, can hardly find a single friend. — William Cowper

A single rose can be a garden ... a single friend, my world. — Leo Buscaglia

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. — Mary Oliver

And she [Eleanor Roosevelt]loves being a star. And she loves being a teacher and a leader and a mentor and a big friend. Also, she's tall. She's one of the tallest girls in the school. And she's an athlete. And she writes many years later, at the end of her life, she writes that the happiest day, the happiest single day of her life was the day that she made the first team at field hockey. And I have to say, as a biographer, that's the most important fact. I — Blanche Wiesen Cook

How I go to the woods
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.
I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.
Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.
If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much. — Mary Oliver

Hana?" Lena says softly. "Are you okay?"
That single stupid question breaks me. All the metal fingers relax me at once, and the tears they've been holding back come surging up at once. Suddenly I am sobbing and telling her everything: about the raid, and the dogs, and the sounds of skulls cracking underneath regulator's nightsticks. Thinking about it again makes me feel like I might puke. At a certain point, Lena puts her arms around me and starts murmuring things into my hair. I don't even know what she's saying, and I don't care. JUst having her here - solid, real, on my side - makes me feel better than I have in weeks. Slowly I manage to stop crying, swallowing back the hiccups and sobs that are still running through me. I try to tell her that I've missed her, and that I've been stupid and wrong, but my voice is muffled and thick — Lauren Oliver

A friend of ours said if the same laws were applied to U.S. Presidents as were applied to the Nazis after WWII, that every single one of them, every last rich white one of them, from Truman on would be hung to death and shot. And this current administration is no exception. They should be hung and tried and shot as war criminals. — Zack De La Rocha

Once I knew, then I forgot. It was as if I had fallen asleep in a field only to discover at waking that a grove of trees had grown up around me.
"Doubt nothing, believe everything," was my friend's idea of metaphysics, although his brother ran away with his wife. He still bought her a rose every day, sat in the empty house for the next twenty years talking to her about the weather.
I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!
My friend's empty house with every one of its windows lit. The dark trees multiplying all around it. — Charles Simic

The higher mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial male who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character. — Emma Goldman

Now, the drug is taboo. You do not fool around with it. You give yourself to it and you are caught. I have a horror of it. I have lived in China without ever being curious enough to put a pipe to my lips. It is not a question of virtue. I do not like pharmacopoeia. I like lucidity. It is my guiding star. I will have nothing to do with the vertigo of opium which, with the single exception of De Quincey, is no friend to poetry. It is a filthy poison. — Blaise Cendrars

Shergahn and friend lay like poleaxed steers, and the Daranfelian's greasy hair was thick with potatoes, carrots, gravy, and chunks of beef. His companion had less stew in his hair, but an equally large lump was rising fast, and Brandark flipped his improvised club into the air, caught it in proper dipping position, and filled it once more from the pot without even glancing at them. He raised the ladle to his nose, inhaled deeply, and glanced at the cook with an impudent twitch of his ears.
"Smells delicious," he said while the laughter started up all around the fire. "I imagine a bellyful of this should help a hungry man sleep. Why, just look what a single ladle of it did for Shergahn! — David Weber

We appealed to the conscience of the world. The world has no conscience. We have no one but ourselves.
The fight. The struggle. The historic destiny. The return of the people. The cause: life therefore having a meaning and shape that eludes the rest of us in the endless wash of 'What the hell are we doing here?' In a single day, says an Israeli friend, he experiences events and emotions that would keep a Swede going for a year. — David Hare

Blame your body. The whole biological purpose of existence is to mate, so from the time we hit puberty, our hormones are demanding us to couple up. Maybe it's basic instinct to feel inadequate if you're single."
"That's what sucks. There's so many more interesting things than guys, but guys are what we spend most of our time talking about."
"I think that's just the way it is, though. No matter what we do, it's always more special if there's a boyfriend to share it with."
"Or a best friend. — Daria Snadowsky

Beg for Love.
Consider this burning, and those who
burn, as gifts from the Friend.
Nothing to learn.
Too much has already been said.
When you read a single page from
the silent book of your heart,
you will laugh at all this chattering,
all this pretentious learning. — Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir

There was Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, an aloof superstar who had everything and needed no one. And Michael Jackson, the shy kid under the mask, who lacked even a single real friend. — Michael Jackson

It is ironic that the only thing separating 'friend' from 'fiend' - is a single letter. — Christina Engela

Plunged up to the ears in work, good friend!" thought Oblomov as he watched him depart. "Yes, and blind and deaf and dumb to everything else in the world! Yet by going into society and, at the same time, busying yourself about your affairs you will yet win distinction and promotion. Such is what they call 'a career'! Yet of how little use is a man like that! His intellect, his will, his feelings
what do they avail him? So many luxuries is what they are
nothing more.
Such an individual lives out his little span without achieving a single thing worth mentioning; and meanwhile he works in an office from morning till night
yes, from morning till night, poor wretch! — Ivan Goncharov

Good-bye, my fair friend; beware of the amusing or capricious ideas which always seduce you too easily. Remember that in the career you are following, intelligence is not enough and that a single imprudence may become an irreparable misfortune. And finally sometime allow prudent friendship to guide your pleasures.
Good-bye, I still love you as much as if you were reasonable. — Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

Almost everyone in heaven has someone on Earth they watch, a loved one, a friend or even a stranger who was once kind, who offered warm food or a bright smile when one of us had needed it. And when I wasn't watching I could hear the others talking to those they loved on Earth: just as fruitlessly as me, I'm afraid. A one-sided card cajoling and coaching of the young, a one way loving and desiring of their mates, a single-sided card that could never get signed. — Alice Sebold

Like Pascal, Nietzsche, and Simone Weil, Kierkegaard is one of those writers whom it is very difficult to estimate justly. When one reads them for the first time, one is bowled over by their originality . . . and by the sharpness of their insights. . . . But with successive readings one's doubts grow, one begins to react against their overemphasis on one aspect of the truth at the expense of all the others, and one's first enthusiasm may all too easily turn to an equally exaggerated aversion. Of all such writers, one might say that one cannot imagine them as children. The more we read them, the more we become aware that something has gone badly wrong with their affective life; . . . it is not only impossible to imagine one of them as a happy husband or wife, it is impossible to imagine their having a single intimate friend to whom they could open their hearts. — W. H. Auden

I have a friend named Doris who argues, on good authority, that the single biggest cause of global warming is menopause. — Dave Barry

I'm tired of living in hatred and resentment. I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself. No, I'm not blaming you for this. Come to think of it, you may be such a victim. You probably don't know how to love yourself. Am I wrong about that? — Haruki Murakami

Is something a friend once told me. She said that every single one of us at birth is given an emotional acre all our own. You get one, your awful Uncle Phil gets one, I get one, Tricia Nixon gets one, everyone gets one. And as long as you don't hurt anyone, you really get to do with your acre as you please. You can plant fruit trees or flowers or alphabetized rows of vegetables, or nothing at all. If you want your acre to look like a giant garage sale, or an auto-wrecking yard, that's what you get to do with it. There's a fence around your acre, though, with a gate, and if people keep coming onto your land and sliming it or trying to get you to do what they think is right, you get to ask them to leave. And they have to go, because this is your acre. — Anne Lamott

The soul of one person can become intertwined with the soul of another. Aristotle is supposed to have said: "What is friendship? It is a single soul dwelling in two bodies." The ancient term for such a relationship is "soul friend," defined as one with whom I have no secrets. The ancient Celtic Christians said that "a person without a soul friend is like a body without a head. — John Ortberg

Tea-
The sweetness of love,
The fragrance of flowers,
The comfort of a friend,
The warmth of a hug
-Such great delight gingerly poured from a single pink teapot. — Zakiyya Rosebelle

But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud ... — Anna Akhmatova

Grief"

Woke up early this morning and from my bed
looked far across the Strait to see
a small boat moving through the choppy water,
a single running light on. Remembered
my friend who used to shout
his dead wife's name from hilltops
around Perugia. Who set a plate
for her at his simple table long after
she was gone. And opened the windows
so she could have fresh air. Such display
I found embarrassing. So did his other
friends. I couldn't see it.
Not until this morning. — Raymond Carver

I have arrived more definitely than any other painter during his lifetime; honours shower upon me from every side; artists pay me compliments on my work; there are many people to whom my position must seem enviable ... . But I don't seem to have a single real friend! — Pierre-Auguste Renoir

No, I took you out on a date because I want to fuck your brains out, among other things, and I know that the feeling is mutual. Unlike your buddy Shane, I don't sugarcoat my intentions. I don't want to be your friend. I have no interest in hanging out with you at the mall or choosing outfits with you or crap like that. I crave you. I want all of you, every single inch of you. And call it an only-child syndrome, but I. DO. NOT. FUCKING. SHARE. — L.J. Shen

Finally he closed the distance between us and kissed me - a sweet, gentle kiss that held within it every single one of the thousand days I'd loved him as my everything, long after I'd begun to love him as a friend. — Aimee Carter

Owning a dog is like having a demanding manner-less friend who never bathes themselves but which somehow ends up spending every single night on your couch. — Matte Resist

It wasn't that I didn't know anyone's phone number - I didn't - it was that only at this moment did I realize I had no one to call. There wasn't a woman, a colleague, or even a relative that I had to contact. Didn't I have a single friend? — Adam Johnson

I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began.
"And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all."
"I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly.
"Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin. — Iain Pears

A friend suggested that I get a job at a children's book store so I could meet kids and read books, and that turned out to be the single best bit of advice I've ever gotten. — Brian Selznick

We are never less alone than when we are in the society of a single, faithful friend; never less deserted than when we are carried in tne arms of the All-Powerful. — Francois Fenelon

Perhaps there really is a good that exists; for a century of darkness to be eschewed by a single flame; for a decade of evil done to the heart to be undone by simple and unplanned acts of kindness! There must be a goodness, after all! But we don't find it when we're looking for it; not in church, not in a cathedral, not even in our own homes! We find it when we've fallen down so hard, are downtrodden so low; and there is one true friend who picks us up; or one random person who takes us in! And we realize goodness was never in the places we thought it was! It was all along in the most humble of places: bound up in the heart of a true friend. — C. JoyBell C.

How should they know? I can't reveal
to a single friend what my soul conceals,
whom I'm in love with or what I believe -
my dreams, my thoughts - or why I grieve. — Hristo Botev

Creation, even when it is a mere outpouring from the heart, wishes to find a public. By definition, creation is sociable. Yet it can be satisfied with merely one single reader: an old friend, a lover. — Lu Xun

It was only in the first few years that she felt herself screaming silently, at times, for a glimpse of human ability, a single glimpse of clean, hard, radiant competence. She had fits of tortured longing for a friend or enemy with a mind better than her own. — Ayn Rand

The lover I am; it befits me to burn;
but what is the reason for your weeping and burning?
The candle replied: 'Oh my ill-fated lover,
a honey-sweet [shirin] friend went away from me.
Someone like Shirin has deserted me;
there is fire on my head, as it was on Farhad's.'
The candle continued, while a painful flood
each moment gushed down on his yellow cheeks:
'Pretender, this love is not your game,
as you have no patience, no strength to stand.
Untouched you shrink from a single flame,
whereas I stand still until I am consumed.
If the fire of love has scorched your wings,
look at me: it burned me from head to foot. — Saadi

Look at him!" One of the girls beside me breathes enthusiastically to her friend.
"He's hot."
I stiffen. I'm sure they're not talking about Professor Collins.
"Must be Christian Grey."
"Is he single?"
I bristle.
"I don't think so," I murmur.
"Oh." Both girls look at me in surprise.
"I think he's gay," I mutter.
"What a shame," one of the girls groans. — E.L. James

Nature is shy and noncommittal in a crowd. To learn her secrets, visit her alone or with a single friend, at most. Everything evades you, everything hides, even your thoughts escape you, when you walk in a crowd. — Edwin Way Teale

My request today is simple. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. Find somebody, anybody, that's different than you. Somebody that has made you feel ill-will or even hateful. Somebody whose life decisions have made you uncomfortable. Somebody who practices a different religion than you do. Somebody who has been lost to addiction. Somebody with a criminal past. Somebody who dresses "below" you. Somebody with disabilities. Somebody who lives an alternative lifestyle. Somebody without a home.
Somebody that you, until now, would always avoid, always look down on, and always be disgusted by.
Reach your arm out and put it around them.
And then, tell them they're all right. Tell them they have a friend. Tell them you love them.
If you or I wanna make a change in this world, that's where we're gonna be able to do it. That's where we'll start.
Every. Single. Time. — Dan Pearce

And at that instant, Ivis, so brightly painted in triumph, does the world freeze? Does time itself cease, nothing crawling on; not a single moment following in its usual tumble? But what world offers this impossibility? Only the one begat in a mind, and then raised in chains, never to be set free. The fashioning of nostalgia, my friend, imprisons us. — Steven Erikson

Hey, laugh all you want, but I grew up poor in backwoods Florida, with an immigrant, single mom. I'm the only person in my family who learned to read, and that was only because of comic books at first, and then fantasy novels and an active imagination. I got addicted to them when I was a kid and read like crazy. I must have read thousands of them. So I've been reading about elves and that kind of thing for twenty plus years. I can't help it if I'm excited." "You were a geek," she said. "Well, I guess." "I bet you played Dungeons and Dragons in a friend's garage." "Well, yeah." "Nerd. — Larry Correia

All my life long I have been sensible of the injustice constantly done to women. Since I have had to fight the world single-handed, there has not been one day I have not smarted under the wrongs I have had to bear, because I was not only a woman, but a woman doing a man's work, without any man, husband, son, brother or friend, to stand at my side, and to see some semblance of justice done me. I cannot forget, for injustice is a sixth sense, and rouses all the others. — Amelia Barr

A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside. — A.A. Milne

But if you are single the last thing you want is your best friend forming a functional relationship with somebody else. — Helen Fielding

He never talked to me. He never spoke a single word to me, but he was the only one who dared to sit close to my fence. He was the only one who stood up for me, the only person who fought for me, the only one who'd punch someone in the face for throwing a rock at my head. I didn't even know how to say thank you.
He was the closest thing to a friend I ever had. — Tahereh Mafi

I just don't know the art of making friends with girls. And that's the reason why I've never had a single girl as a friend. Also, I'm so engrossed in cricket that I've never found an opportunity to interact with girls very closely. In a way, it's better, as my mind doesn't get diverted! — Harbhajan Singh

There is a third quality to friendship, and it is not as easy to put into a single word. The right word, literally, is "sympathy" - sym-pathos, common passion. This means that friendships are discovered more than they are created at will. — Timothy Keller

Faith should be a tool to set us free, not a means to fuel a fascist agenda seeking to impede the civil liberties of the "us"s. The first shall be last and the last shall be first ... therefore, those who stand for their Pius self-righteousness in order to trample those they deem inferior will be the 'last' and the poor and oppressed shall be 'first.' If the self-righteous want a lesson on morality, then actually take a lesson from Jesus whose best friend was a former hooker and whose mother was a single parent. — Cristina Marrero

Rosie: I don't know what you're talking about! I am not waiting for Alex!
Ruby: Yes you are, my dear friend. He must be some man because nobody can ever measure up to him. And I know that's what you do every time you meet someone: compare. I'm sure he's a fabulous friend and I'm sure he always says sweet and wonderful thing to you. But he's not here. He's thousands of miles away, working as a doctor in a great big hospital and he lives in a fancy apartment with his fancy doctor fiancee. I don't think he's thinking of leaving that life anytime soon to come back to a single mother who's living in a tiny flat working in a crappy part-time job in a paperclip factory with a crazy friend who emails her every second. So stop waiting and move on. Live your life. — Cecelia Ahern

Safi vaulted left, scarcely avoiding a flurry of ice shards that were quickly sizzled up by a wall of flame. All lines had faded between friend and foe, slave and slaver, Red Sail and Baedyed. Everyone fought. Every single thrice-damned person alive in this arena grappled body to body, blade to blade, or magic to magic. — Susan Dennard

My Dear Friend,
Don't ever allow yourself to forget how incredibly special you are, even for a single second. Without you, the world would not be as magnificent. Let yourself remember to love again, starting with you loving you. — Miya Yamanouchi

Kate, I'll say it like this. Vincent is my best friend. There's not a person in this world I'm closer to. But for the past year, I have betrayed him in my heart every single day because I want for myself what he loves the very most. — Amy Plum

Whoever came to see Rebbe Shmelke with outstretched palms left bearing a gift. one day, when he had not a single piece of change, he gave a beggar a ring he saw lying on the table. It belonged to his wife, who, when she heard the story, complained loudly: "How could you, didn't you know this was a valuable ring, a diamond ring?"
Whereupon Shmelke ran out of the house in pursuit of the beggar, shouting: "Friend, listen, that ring is valuable! Don't let the jeweler cheat you! You mustn't sell it too cheap! — Elie Wiesel

Making a hundred friends is not a miracle. The miracle is to make a single friend who will stand by your side even when hundreds are against you. — John Spence

Real men are told, "I'm sorry, I'm not interested" or "I have a friend who is single that I would like to introduce you to" when they are rejected. That is pretty much it. No dramatic scenes, no broken hearts, no agonizing pain or suffering to keep them awake at night. It just happens, life goes on, they meet another woman, and she keeps them awake at night. — W. Anton

She eyed him uncertainly. "Very well. Nick wants me, but he's decided not to ... to ... " She floundered
to a halt and the tears that threatened in her eyes became reality. One, single drop slipped down her
cheek.
Bloody hell. Anthony raked a hand through his hair. "Do you mean to tell me that Bridgeton is not ... er,
fulfilling his husbandly duties?"
She nodded miserably. "Oh, Anthony, what am I to do?"
He closed his eyes. God above. He was a decent man, one who took his responsibilities seriously. He
was a good friend, an excellent landlord, and he never cheated at cards, unless it was with one of his own
brothers. What had he done to deserve this? — Karen Hawkins

If we go looking for a friend, we'll find many locked doors. It can be a lonely and often fruitless search. Sometimes it feels like no matter how hard we knock there's not a single person to be found for true friendship. But... when we go out to BE a friend, we find an endless supply of open doors and people to share and experience our lives with. And that's the real key. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? I cannot imagine - unless one is weary of crossing days off the calendar with no sense of what makes the last day different from the next. Unless one is weary of acting in what feels more like a television commercial than a life. The practice of paying attention offers no quick fix for such weariness, with guaranteed results printed on the side. Instead, it is one way into a different way of life, full of treasure for those who are willing to pay attention to exactly where they are. — Barbara Brown Taylor

But over and above the offers of help and love, precious and determined though they are, is the fact that we are public knowledge. Our signal has been heard. By each response a friend is activated. Our message had a single note. Here is its returning chord. — Marion Coutts

I haven't a single friend; I must live alone. But well I know that God is nearer to me than to the others of my art; I associate with Him without fear, I have always recognized and understood Him, and I have no fear for my music,-it can meet no evil fate. Those who understand it must become free from all the miseries that the others drag with them. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

The best guide I know to readerly judgment is our old friend Auden, who graciously summed up a lifetime of thinking about these matters in a single incisive sentence: For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don't like it; I can see this is good, and, though at present I don't like it, I believe with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don't like it. — Alan Jacobs

And then there was his love affair with my best friend, perhaps the only woman he'd ever seen drink several glasses of bai-jiu and smoke a half-pack of cigarettes in a single seating. Each dish that night had a special presentation, a colorful ring of carrots about the twice-fried eggplant, a garland of thinly-sliced chilies haloing the garlicky green beans, a well-placed broccoli head in the fish's open mouth. She smiled at him when he gave her one of his cigarettes, coyly lighting it with a subtle turn of the wrist, and after she took her first long drag, he motioned us up. Never to be repeated, he brought us back his narrow kitchen, a blackened wok bubbling over a powerful blue fire. Deftly splashing it with alcohol, he flipped the contents into the air and watched the flame dance across her eyes. — Megan Rich

I'd just single handedly given the love of my life to my best friend - on a silver platter, with a shiny bow attached. — Rachel Van Dyken

I melt and swell at the moment of landing when one wheel thuds on the runway but the plane leans to one side and hangs in the decision to right itself or roll. For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you're gone. Not your luggage. Nothing matters. Not your bad breath. The windows are dark outside and the turbine engines roar backward. The cabin hangs at the wrong angle under the roar of the turbines, and you will never have to file another expense account claim. Receipt required for items over twenty-five dollars. You will never have to get another haircut.
A thud, and the second wheel hits the tarmac. The staccato of a hundred seat-belt buckles snapping open, and the single-use friend you almost died sitting next to says:
I hope you make your connection.
Yeah, me too.
And this is how long your moment lasted. And life goes on. — Chuck Palahniuk

But getting back to my old friend water, the thing of it is this: No matter how hot or how cold, no matter its state, its form, its qualities, or its color, each molecule of water still consists of no more than a single oxygen atom bonded to two sister atoms of hydrogen. It takes all three of them to make a blinding blizzard - or a thunderstorm, for that matter ... or a puffy white cloud in a summer sky. O Lord, how manifold are thy works! — Alan Bradley

No one alive today has a single ancestor in his or her past who died in infancy. We are the champions, my friend! — Daniel J. Levitin

The idea that you try to time purchases based on what you think business is going to do in the next year or two, I think that's the greatest mistake investors make because it's always uncertain. People say it's a time of uncertainty. It was uncertain on September 10th, 2001, people just didn't know it. It's uncertain every single day. So take uncertainty as part of being involved in investment at all. But uncertainty can be your friend. I mean, when people are scared they pay less for things. We try to price. We don't try to time at all. — Warren Buffett

Some pasts exist as a fog that rolls in and out of the present, formed not by air that condenses into mist but memories that condense into tiny doors that open to forgotten moments. Maybe you glance at a stranger on a crowded street who reminds you of a childhood friend or hear a song that was popular the first summer you fell in love, and in the space of that single beat of time you are flung backward to a who or when long past. And yet it is only for that one beat. Those tiny doors never remain open for long for most of us. They ensure our former times are kept as relics, and the dust upon them is wiped clean only occasionally — Billy Coffey

The children were overwhelmingly morbid. Not a single adult asked me where butterflies go when they die, but this question was more popular than pixie sticks with the under-four-foot set. I cursed parents for not preparing their children. When I was five, my mother and sister sat me up on the kitchen counter and explained the facts of life: the Easter Bunny didn't exist, Elijah was God's invisible friend, with any luck Nana would die soon, and if I ever saw a unicorn, I should kill it or catch it for cash. I turned out okay. — Sloane Crosley

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. — Aristotle.

The Family and Medical Leave Act, for example, only entitles spouses, grown children, and parents to take time off to care for a sick loved one. If a childless single person falls ill, only her parents have the legal right to take off work to care for her. If they're deceased or not up to the task, she's out of luck. Even if she has a sister, niece, or best friend willing to take a leave, they won't be legally entitled to do so. No one has the right to care for her. — Sara Eckel

Remember: If you go for a walk with a friend in England, don't say a single word for hours; if you go for a walk with your dog, talk to it all the time. — George Mikes

I remember every player - every single one - who wore the Tennessee orange, a shade that our rivals hate, a bold, aggravating color that you can usually find on a roadside crew, "or in a correctional institution," as my friend Wendy Larry jokes. But to us the color is a flag of pride, because it identifies us as Lady Vols and therefore as women of an unmistakable type. Fighters. I remember how many of them fought for a better life for themselves. I just met them halfway. — Pat Summitt

A close friend of mine, Annie Leibovitz, who I've known for forty years, photographs celebrities every single day of the week but they all seem to look the same even though she's one of the most creative photographers alive. They all just look the same. Brad Pitt is a great actor but all the pictures of Brad Pitt look the same. — Lawrence Schiller

Everything, my good friend, is relative, from the king who stands in the way of his designated successor to the employee who impedes the supernumerary: if the king dies, the successor inherits a crown; if the employee dies, the supernumerary inherits a salary of twelve hundred livres. These twelve hundred livres are his civil list: they are as necessary to his survival as the king's twelve million. Every individual, from the lowest to the highest on the social scale, is at the centre of a little network of interests, with its storms and its hooked atoms, like the worlds of Descartes;2 except that these worlds get larger as one goes up: it is a reverse spiral balanced on a single point. — Alexandre Dumas

My mom was a single mother, raising my sister and me. My mom has an incredible talent for living in the world without traditional structure, and her friend, who was in advertising, put me in a commercial when I was five. It was just to make money. — Gaby Hoffmann

She'd been in love with the way Todd made her feel about herself. Evan had been her best friend, but his treatment of her, in a way, had been a rejection. Every single day for two damn years, she'd felt rejected by him. It was no wonder her self-esteem had been so beaten down she'd fal en for the first sweet-talker to come along. — Cherrie Lynn

I love you, Savannah, and I always will," I breathed. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. You were my best friend and my lover, and I dont regret a single moment of it. You made me feel alive again, and most of all, you gave me my father. I'll never forget you for that. You're always going to be the very best part of me. I'm sorry it has to be this way, but I have to leave, and you have to see your husband." As I spoke, I could feel her shaking with sobs, and I continued to hold her for a long time afterward. When we finally seperated, I knew that it would be the last time I ever held her. I backed away, my eyes holding Savannah's. "I love you, too, John," she said. "Good-bye." I raised a hand. — Nicholas Sparks

We came hither together, friend, and now at the cross-roads I stop to bid you farewell.

Your path is wide and straight before you, but my call comes up by ways from the unknown.

I shall follow wind and cloud; I shall follow the stars to where day breaks behind the hills;
I shall follow lovers who, as they walk, twine their days into a wreath on a single thread
of song, "I love. — Rabindranath Tagore

Before she was evicted, Larraine had $164 left over after paying the rent. She could have put some of that away, shunning cable and Walmart. If Larraine somehow managed to save $50 a month, nearly one-third of her after-rent income, by the end of the year she would have $600 to show for it - enough to cover a single month's rent. And that would have come at considerable sacrifice, since she would sometimes have had to forgo things like hot water and clothes. Larraine could have at least saved what she spent on cable. But to an older woman who lived in a trailer park isolated from the rest of the city, who had no car, who didn't know how to use the Internet, who only sometimes had a phone, who no longer worked, and who sometimes was seized with fibromyalgia attacks and cluster migraines - cable was a valued friend. — Matthew Desmond

If out of all mankind one finds a single friend, he has found something more precious than any treasure, since there is nothing in the world so valuable that it can be compared to a real friend. — Andreas Capellanus

Nothing better between five and seven than to be pushed around in that throng, to follow a leg or a beautiful bust, to move along with the tide and everything whirling in your brain. A weird sort of contentment in those days. No appointments, no invitations for dinner, no program, no dough. The golden period, when I had not a single friend. — Henry Miller

Woolf worried about the childlessness from time to time, and suffered from the imposed anxiety that she was not, unlike her friend Vita Sackville-West, a real woman. I do not know what kind of woman one would have to be to stand unflinchingly in front of The Canon, but I would guess, a real one. There is something sadistic in the whip laid on women to prove themselves as mothers and wives at the same time as making their way as artists. The abnormal effort that can be diverted or divided. We all know the story of Coleridge and the Man from Porlock. What of the woman writer and a whole family of Porlocks?
For most of us the dilemma is rhetorical but those women who are driven with consummate energy through a single undeniable channel should be applauded and supported as vigorously as the men who have been setting themselves apart for centuries. — Jeanette Winterson

As my friend John says, we men are quick to give the three slaps on the back of the friend we're hugging, each one of which stands for a single word: "I'm. Not. Gay." And after giving that hug, we try hard to preserve some kind of closeness but, at the same time, keep it moderated with an appropriate distance. — Wesley Hill

And for five years it was no longer possible to enjoy the call of birds in the cool of the evening. We were forced to despair. We were cut off from the world because to each moment clung a whole mass of mortal images. For five years the earth has not seen a single morning without death agonies, a single evening without prisons, a noon without slaughter. — Albert Camus

Missing what most of the time? The babbling faceless agora, the fame, the parties, the pop of flash bulbs? The lovers, the gaiety, the champagne? The solitude carved out of celebrity, poring over charts by a single lamp on a wide desk in a venerable hotel? Room service, coffee before dawn? The company of one friend, two? The choice: All of it or not? Some or none? Now, not now, maybe later? — Peter Heller

Just because a guy wanders through the produce aisle, isn't wearing a wedding band and lets you have the last ripe avocado, it doesn't mean he's single. It also doesn't mean you should fix him up with your best friend. His presence in the fresh produce section should've been the giveaway. Bachelors don't tend to buy perishable items." - Amanda in "A Deal with the Devil — Abby Matisse

Angels exist; sometimes they're your best friend and other times they are someone you met a single time or know only by name, but they are angels just the same. — J.D. Stroube

The biggest single problem of American parents today is the foolish idea that you just have to be a friend to your children. Kids need parents, not just another pal. This means being able and willing to say no, to challenge faulty thinking, and to expect accountability. — Steve Biddulph

A book isn't a single, static thing with one unarguable meaning. Each reader who comes to it brings his own special knowledge, habits and attitudes. Each reader reads a different book. Each reader imagines a different story.
A few years ago, for instance, a friend of my mother's sent me a copy of a test on Rite of Passage that she had given her students. The first question read: "True or False? The theme of Rite of Passage is ... " I can't tell you what the presumed themed was, but I can tell you that I didn't recognize it. Beads of sweat leaped out of my forehead. After two more questions, I had to put the test aside. I didn't know the "right" answers. — Alexei Panshin

It had taken her whole life to make a single friend. And here these girls had become best friends in minutes as if making friends was the simplest thing in the world. Agatha pricked with shame. — Soman Chainani

I can't stand cell phones and I don't know one single thing about the computer. I have a friend come that lives in my building to check if I have emails. I don't even know what to google. — Brigid Berlin

I cannot believe that everything must be subordinated to a single end. There are means which cannot be excused. — Albert Camus

I also see how essential a comprehensive treatment plan is, a plan that incorporates education, understanding, empathy, structure, coaching, a plan for success and physical exercise as well as medication. I see how important the human connection is every step of the way: connection with parent or spouse; with teacher or supervisor; with friend or colleague; with doctor, with therapist, with coach, with the world "out there." In fact, I see the human connection as the single most powerful therapeutic force in the treatment of ADHD. — Edward M. Hallowell

A single rose can be my garden; a single friend, my world. — Leo Buscaglia