Friend Problem Quotes & Sayings

We all want to be stars. The idea of being revered and envied must be encoded somewhere deep in our DNA. So must the desire to revere and envy others we imagine to be better, more accepted, and more popular than we are. The only problem is that the most necessary qualities required to be a celebrity
self-absorption, egomania, shamelessness
are the least attractive in a friend. — Tonya Hurley

That's how it goes, my friend. The problem is not falling a captive, it's how to avoid surrender. — Nazim Hikmet

Simply put, a woman's brain is not her friend when it comes to confidence. We think too much and we think about the wrong things. Thinking harder and harder and harder won't solve our issues, though, it won't make us more confident, and it most certainly freezes decision making, not to mention action. Remember, the female brain works differently from the male brain; we really do have more going on, we are more keenly aware of everything happening around us, and that all becomes part of our cognitive stew. Ruminating drains the confidence from us. Those negative thoughts, and nightmare scenarios masquerading as problem solving, spin on an endless loop. We render ourselves unable to be in the moment or to trust our instincts because we are captive to those distracting, destructive thoughts, which gradually squeeze all the spontaneity out of life and work. We have got to stop ruminating. — Katty Kay

Another thing about Oscar is that he wasn't afraid of anyone. And he always made up his own mind, no matter what other people said. They're two of the best things I remember about him now.
He wasn't just my friend. He was kind of magic. I can't really explain it better than that. He was honest and he was decent and he was always cheerful. And evem though his brother Stevie had to use a wheelchair, it wasn't a problem the way people usually think it is, because Oscar always made sure that every door was opened and every stairway had a ramp, and every train station had the right access so he could get it. He used to say that if the world was designed properly, the whole population would be flying around the place in wheelchairs. And when he said that, Stevie used to laugh. — Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

We're not great friends, but I admire him. If he thinks he's the best player of the century, that's his problem. — Pele

I just slipped into my mother's office to look at the names of my new peer helpers, and I'm so happy! Your name is on the list! I thought maybe I'd scared you by coming right out and asking you to apply. I realize it's an unusual setup, but try not to think of it as my parents offering to pay people to be my friend. I know there's something unsettling and prideless in that. I prefer to think of it this way: my parents are paying people to pretend to be my friend. This will be much closer to the truth, I suspect, and I have no problem with this. I'm guessing that a lot of people in high school are only pretending to be friends, right? It'll be a start, I figure. — Cammie McGovern

Pastors are starting to get wily. When people tell my friend, 'I'm not being fed,' he replies, 'I'm prefectly happy to spoon feed my one-year-old. But if I'm still spoon-feeding him when he's five, we've got a problem. Here's a fork. Feed yourself. — Jon Acuff

Certain directors and actors were constantly preoccupied by one problem, and apparently, one only. This was connected with the so-called German greeting, which was the method of hailing a friend by raising the right arm straight out with the hand extended at, or slightly above, the level of the shoulder. This greeting had very definite political implications; it was employed daily by millions; and the directors and actors saw no reason why it should not be one on the films in a simple and life-like fashion. They failed. Even when shown in the rushes the effect on the select and professional audience was simply to produce uncontrollable hilarity. The cinema can do a great deal. It can entrance, t can tell fairy tales, it can be realistic or surrealistic -- but it cannot portray a gesture that is false without underlining the most brutal way its basic falseness. The German cinema could not reproduce the German greeting; it was the greeting that was to blame, not the cinema. — Ernst Von Salomon

To survive in most arenas of power you must first understand that everyone lies, everyone cheats, and no one is your friend. The paradox is that not everyone lies, and not everyone cheats, and some people are your friends. The problem lies in the fact that one smiling face and handshake looks much like another, and when you're surrounded by consummate liars, how to tell the truth from the lie, friend from foe? Better to treat everyone professionally, pleasantly, smile, nod, be friendly, but never be friends. Because there is no way to tell who is on your side, not really. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Lots of people have a vision, but what we need is a viable transition strategy, my ever-thoughtful friend Herb Barbolet insists. Food advocates (and of course, we'll be changing that word to problem-solvers) are too removed from sources of power, resources, and public support to be able to implement anything like a comprehensive vision for wholesale change of the food system in anything like the immediate future. But we can move to transition phase. — Wayne Roberts

But like my young friend said, this is not the way it seems in the beginning. Before things go bad, it's just a night that sounds like a lot of fun. A day that feels like wasting. A risk that looks like something we can likely handle, a limb that'll probably hold our weight. We don't think getting back home will be a problem when we're finished. After all, we're not going far. Not until we're well down the mountain, much too far to pull ourselves easily back up to the top, we realize we've gotten ourselves into a mess. Instead of three or four good ways to get back on our feet, we now have maybe one - or none - none that don't come without a long, hard process, without a good bit of shame — Priscilla Shirer

A friend of mine tells me that a Beethoven symphony can solve for him a problem of conduct. I've no doubt that it does so simply by giving him a sense of the tragedy and the greatness of human destiny, which makes his personal anxieties seem small, which throws them into a new proportion. — Joyce Cary

Do you want to make progress? If so, then take each problem not as a challenging rival, but as an encouraging friend of yours, who is helping you to arrive at your ultimate destination. — Sri Chinmoy

I am exclusively occupied with the problem of gravitation and hope with the help of a local mathematician friend [Marcel Grossman] to overcome all the difficulties. One thing is certain, however, that never in life have I been quite so tormented. A great respect for mathematics has been instilled within me, the subtler aspects of which, in my stupidity, I regarded until now as pure luxury. — Albert Einstein

asked how, if he never had spoken before to women outside his family, he was able to serve as spiritual counselor to the village women. My friend looked at me strangely. "They put their problems to him through their husbands, of course," he said. "But what if their husband is their problem?" That possibility hadn't crossed either man's mind. — Geraldine Brooks

In conclusion I wish to say that in working at the problem here dealt with I have had the loyal assistance of my friend and colleague M. Besso, and that I am indebted to him for several valuable suggestions. — Albert Einstein

When Ben unfurls the T-shirts, there are two small problems. First, it turns out that a large T-shirt in a Georgia gas station is not the same size as a large T-shirt at, say, Old Navy. The gas station shirt is gigantic-more garbage bag than shirt. It is smaller than the graduation robes, but not by much. But this problem pales in comparison to the other problem, which is that both T-shirts are embossed with huge Confederate flags. Printed over the flag are the words HERITAGE NOT HATE.
"Oh no you didn't," Radar says when I show him why we're laughing. "Ben Starling, you better not have bought your token black friend a racist shirt."
"I just grabbed the first shirts I saw, bro."
"Don't bro me right now," Radar says, but he's shaking his head and laughing. I hand him his shirt and he wiggles into it while driving with his knees. "I hope I get pulled over," he says. "I'd like to see how the cop responds to a black man wearing a Confederate T-shirt over a black dress. — John Green

He [Wallace] sent a quick note to his friend [Franzen] explaining his behavior. "the bold fact is that I'm a little afraid of you right now,"[ ... ] "all I can tell you is that I may have been that [a worthy opponent] for you a couple/ three years ago, and maybe 16 months or tow or 5 or 10 years hence, but right now I am a pathetic and very confused man, a failed writer at 28, who is so jealous, so sickly searing envious of you and Vollmann and Mark Leyner and even David Fuckward Leavitt and any young man who is right now producing pages with which he can live and even approving them off some base-clause of conviction about the entrprise's meaning and end that I consider suicide a reasonable- if not at this point a desirable- option with respect to the whole wretched problem. — D.T. Max

A pastor friend of mine said, Our problem is that we no longer have martyrs. We only have celebrities. — Shane Claiborne

Another friend began to say, "Well, Quentin has a problem of adjusting himself to society and he ... " This sentence was never finished. The ballet teacher expostulated, "I don't agree. Quentin does exactly as he pleases. The rest of us have to adapt ourselves to him." — Quentin Crisp

That must have been what I looked like to my doctor friend. That must be what I look like to anyone with a real problem - active-duty soldier, homeless person, Chilean miner, etc. A little tiny person with nothing to worry about running in circles, worried out of her mind. Either way, everything will be fine. — Tina Fey

When you have a problem with an adult - say, for example, you have a friend who's always borrowing things and returning them late or broken or not at all - you probably don't think about how you can punish that person. You think about how to respectfully protect yourself. You don't say, "Now that you've given me back my jacket with a stain on it, and broken the side mirror off my car, I'm going to . . . slap you." That would be assault. Or ". . . lock you in your room for an hour." That would be imprisonment. Or ". . . take away your smart phone." That would be theft. You'd probably say something like, "I don't feel comfortable lending you clothes anymore. I get very upset when they come back damaged. And, I can't lend you my car, which I just got repaired. I need to have it in working condition. In fact, I'd appreciate some help with the repair bill! — Joanna Faber

I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," EPICAC had written after Pat's and my
lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will love me. But fate
has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve. That is the only problem I want to solve. I
can't go on this way." I swallowed hard. "Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well. I am going to shortcircuit myself out of your lives forever. You will find on the remainder of this tape a modest wedding
present from your friend, EPICAC. — Kurt Vonnegut

A friend of ours encountered this problem with his home-built computer long ago. He wrote a BIOS that used a magic value in a particular memory location to determine whether a reset was a cold reboot or a warm reboot. After a while the machine refused to boot after power-up because the memory had learned the magic value, and the boot process therefore treated every reset as a warm reboot. As this did not initialize the proper variables, the boot process failed.
The solution in his case was to swap some memory chips around, scrambling the magic value that the SRAM had learned. For us, it was a lesson to remember: memory retains more data than you think. — Niels Ferguson

I believed, with morbid sincerity, that if I could make him my friend, we would together, in some small but consequential way, defy the wicked logic of hate and war, that we, together, would stand as a rebuke to the grotesque idea that our problem was without a solution. — Jeffrey Goldberg

You always feel so much better about yourself when your friend gets angry with you rather than trying to solve the problem. Sometimes, you just have to bitch. "Tell — Meghan Quinn

You were supposed to empathize with your friend's problem, but they were, after all, your friend's problems ... — Christopher Moore

Each of them had done their best. Matt was still his friend. For Meredith, maybe the day would come when she could look at him and not think "inhuman" - or at least not think it immediately and constantly. Maybe Bonnie, the moth, would be able to stay away from the unholy flame. Now, there was something to worry about. He could all too easily see Bonnie taking a walk on the very wild side with Damon. His brother had a soft spot for her already, she knew. But if either of them had a problem, he already knew what he had to do to find a plan for a solution.
Just look up. — L.J.Smith

However, it really becomes a problem when you are ashamed of your sexual desires, since you have to reveal to women that you find them sexy and that you want to have sex with them to seduce them. Otherwise, you will end up with a female friend, not a girlfriend, because sex is what separates the two kinds of relationships. — W. Anton

See, that's the problem with putting too much stock in the old days. You remember all the GOOD stuff, but you forget about the time you got spanked by your best friend's mom. — Jeff Kinney

"Charming people, when not actively shooting one another," a friend had once said, which was so unkind, but, like so many unkind comments, had a grain of truth in it. They did shoot one another and had been doing so for centuries. They did bicker over and brood on long-dead history
or history that should be long dead. The problem with history was that it refused to lie down and die. — Alexander McCall Smith

I never wanted to show my butt, and I always had a problem with it - I'd cover up when I was younger. It wasn't till I got with my husband that I started to change all that. He compliments me all the time, and when your best friend compliments you, it gives you confidence and makes you want to do stuff in life. — Coco Austin

See - this is the problem. You don't even get where this is going. You can't just ask me to come in, or kiss me, or tell me you want to know what smoking pot feels like. When I'm close to you I feel crazy, okay? When you say my name I feel crazy. It's not ... the right thing for you. I don't think I can just ... be your friend. — Charlotte Stein

Let me leave you with one very recent example of Berry at his best, drawn from an op-ed piece that he published (with his old friend and collaborator Wes Jackson) shortly after the economy crashed in the fall of 2008. For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. This is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the agribusiness corporations. I — Wendell Berry

Brod was a brilliant intellectual with exceptional energy; a generous man willing to do battle for others; his attachment to Kafka was warm and disinterested. The only problem was his artistic orientation: a man of ideas, he knew nothing of the passion for form; his novels (he wrote twenty of them) are sadly conventional; and above all: he understood nothing at all about modern art.
Why, despite all this, was Kafka so fond of him? What about you-do you stop being fond of your best friend because he has a compulsion to write bad verse? — Milan Kundera

his survival was threatened day by day. Minute by minute. It was impossible to picture a spoiled, beautiful man like Christopher Phelan contending with danger and hardship. Hunger. Loneliness. Beatrix stared at her friend pensively, their gazes meeting in the looking glass. "What is your favorite song, Pru?" "I don't have one, actually. Tell him yours." "Should we discuss this with Audrey?" Beatrix asked, referring to Phelan's sister-in-law. "Certainly not. Audrey has a problem with honesty. She wouldn't send the letter if she knew I hadn't written it." Beatrix made a sound that could have either been a laugh or a groan. — Lisa Kleypas

This principle - that your spouse should be capable of becoming your best friend - is a game changer when you address the question of compatibility in a prospective spouse. If you think of marriage largely in terms of erotic love, then compatibility means sexual chemistry and appeal. If you think of marriage largely as a way to move into the kind of social status in life you desire, then compatibility means being part of the desired social class, and perhaps common tastes and aspirations for lifestyle. The problem with these factors is that they are not durable. Physical attractivess will wane, no matter how hard you work to delay its departure. And socio-economic status unfortunately can change almost overnight. When people think they have found compatibility based on these things, they often make the painful discovery that they have built their relationship on unstable ground. A woman "lets herself go" or a man loses his job, and the compatibility foundation falls apart. — Timothy Keller

I start walking toward my bike with renewed purpose.
"I don't think I need any help to knock on a door."
Carlos yells, "Be careful, my friend. The problem with knocking on doors is you're never quite sure who's going to be on the other side. — Greg Logsted

If you cannot always elicit a straight answer from the unconscious brain, how can you access its knowledge? Sometimes the trick is merely to probe what your gut is telling you. So the next time a friend laments that she cannot decide between two options, tell her the easiest way to solve her problem: flip a coin. She should specify which option belongs to heads and which to tails, and then let the coin fly. The important part is to assess her gut feeling after the coin lands. If she feels a subtle sense of relief at being "told" what to do by the coin, that's the right choice for her. If, instead, she concludes that it's ludicrous for her to make a decision based on a coin toss, that will cue her to choose the other option. — David Eagleman

I'm always the kind of friend or girlfriend who suggests, when there's some cataclysmic problem in the relationship, I'm like, "Well, maybe we can come up with a creative activity that will help us out." I'm like, "Let's get out the pens! Draw a picture of how much you hate me!" — Miranda July

Then what's the problem? You keep telling me she's just a job. So, fine. The job's done. You found her. You trained her. Now she has to do her part. She has to kill Dmitri. Whether she can survive the battle or not doesn't matter, and it isn't up to you to decide." Luc got up from the swing and went to Daniel. "Listen, man, I'm trying to be a friend here. You've been down here so long you're starting to think like one of them. Quit trying to grow a conscience and just finish what you started. — Angela B. Wade

I think the biggest problem is parents are so concerned with being friends with their kids. You're not their friend. You're their parent. — Charles Barkley

Studies show that people have no problem ignoring strangers' injuries, but when a friend is insulted, our sense of outrage is enough to overcome the inertia that usually makes protests hard to organize. — Charles Duhigg

The problem was that Leo had a consuming desire to be everything to Catherine. He wanted to be her exclusive confidant, her lover and closest friend, to tend to her most intimate needs. To warm her with his body when she was cold, hold a cup to her lips when she was thirsty, rub her feet when she was tired. To join his life with hers in every significant and mundane way. — Lisa Kleypas

In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability. — Daniel Dennett

I've noticed in myself that if something small and ultimately meaningless has gone wrong - I can't find the file I left on top of my desk, my daughter failed to do what I asked her to do before going to a friend's house - I can easily get rattled. But if someone calls to inform me of a serious difficulty - someone has been in an accident, or a child is in trouble - I notice a profound stillness come over me as I focus on the problem. In the former case, my temptation to become frantic does not attract solutions, but rather hinders them. There is nothing in my personal energy that invites help from others, nor do I have the clarity to think through what I need to do next. — Marianne Williamson

You still don't like the idea of gay marriage? Then, as my friend the economist Julianne Malveaux says: Don't marry a gay person. Case closed, problem solved. — Barbara Ehrenreich

I have a friend who, if she has a bad hair day, it affects her whole mood because it is part of her sexuality, her confidence. I don't have that problem any more. — Cathy Freeman

You could be David's friend too". She glanced at Tamani when he said nothing. He was frowning. "The two of you really have a lot in common, and we're all in this together".
He shook his head. "It wouldn't work".
"Why not? He's a nice guy. And it would do you good to have some human friends", she said hinting at what she suspected was the root of the problem.
"It's not that", Tamani said, gesturing vaguely with one hand.
"Then why?" Laurel asked, exasperated.
"I just don't want to cosy up to the guy whose girl I have every intention of stealing — Aprilynne Pike

So I'd stabbed needles into my eyes and pretended not to see certain things. Bad things. Only by turning my back on certain thing, I ended up turning my back on my dearest friend, a betrayal I never intended.
Or so I told myself. That was the problem with lying to yourself. Sometimes you got too good. — Lauren Myracle

That's my big problem. That's it! Before the Arrival,guys like Evan Walker never looked twice at me, much less shot wild game for me and washed my hair. They never grabbed me by the back of the neck like the airbrushed model on his mother's paperback,abs a-clenching, pecs a-popping. My eyes have never been looked into, or my chin raised to bring my lips within an inch of theirs. I was the girl in the background, the just-friend,or -worse- the friend of a just-friend, the you-sit-next-to-her-in-geometry-but-can't-remember-her-name girl. — Rick Yancey

Realizing that other people have a problem with [homosexuality] was the weirdest thing for me. As a kid it wasn't even something that was mentioned. It was never something that was even explained to me. It was just, "That's Mark and he's gay." Mark was just another friend of my dad's who would talk about his boyfriend instead of his girlfriend. I was 5. I didn't care. It seemed perfectly normal, and still does ... — Daniel Radcliffe

When people are skilled at adopting free traits, it can be hard to believe that they're acting out of character. Professor Little's students are usually incredulous when he claims to be an introvert. But Little is far from unique; many people, especially those in leadership roles, engage in a certain level of pretend-extroversion. Consider, for example, my friend Alex, the socially adept head of a financial services company, who agreed to give a candid interview on the condition of sealed-in-blood anonymity. Alex told me that pretend-extroversion was something he taught himself in the seventh grade, when he decided that other kids were taking advantage of him. "I was the nicest person you'd ever want to know," Alex recalls, "but the world wasn't that way. The problem was that if you were just a nice person, you'd get crushed. I refused to live a life where people could do that stuff to me. I was like, OK, what's the policy prescription here? ... — Susan Cain

Genuinely support people in ways you can. If you build great relationships and people get to like you for you, they will eventually promote what you do and would want to do business with you. The bottom line is that people love to do business with those they love and trust. Learn to understand people, your audience, their needs, and their real problem. If you are using a Facebook page or even your own profile, involve your friends in a fruitful discussion. Don't just make a post and leave to expect likes and comments. Take time to leave a note for a friend, ask about their business and what interests them. — Bernard Kelvin Clive

Your imaginary friend isn't the problem, Amanda. The problem is that you don't seem to have any real friends. — Rebecca McNutt

The worst feeling in the world is not losing your friend forever, but rather having patronizing people tell you that the love you have for your friend and the connection and emotion you have towards them is an illness to be cured, a problem to be covered up and hidden away by the power of mood-altering drugs. I used to trust doctors when I was younger... now I've lost my trust in all mental health professionals forever. — Rebecca McNutt

Singlehood is a problem to be solved. Even the bishops in singles wards are impatient with us, frustrated with the amount of time they spend away from their families, dealing with violations of the law of chastity. There's an easy solution, we're often reminded. "Just choose one," said one bishop to a male friend of mine, and indicated, like a game show host, the array of available women before him. — Nicole Hardy

When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem. — Edward Abbey

These are our neighbours, our co-workers, friends' children ... the problem is closer than you think, but so is the solution. — Phillip C. McGraw

Problem with an old friend who is too busy:
he always perceives you as if never changed. — Toba Beta

I had more problems with the men in our own government, and not because they were male chauvinistic pigs but because they had known me for so long. I might have been a carpool mother and a friend of their wife, and so they'd been to my house for dinner and things like and they thought 'how did she get to be secretary of state when I should be secretary of state?' So that was more of a problem. — Madeleine Albright

Matt huffs. "Can you do me a favor, Ryke? These two owe my uncle forty grand." He points to me. "This girl says her checkbook is in the car. Follow them and get the money from her." "Yeah, no problem." My stomach drops further. Now we're going to be tailed by Matt's superhero friend who looks fit enough to tackle me and pin me to the grass. — Krista Ritchie

Once, she'd cried, telling me that she thought she should have noticed, should have seen that I was in trouble, should have done something. I told her it was my problem and my job to solve it. "Just be my friend," I said. "That's what I need most. — Jennifer Weiner

I have a terrible problem with procrastination ... a friend told me, "Well, you should go to therapy." And I thought about it, but then I said, "Wait a minute. Why should I pay a stranger to listen to me talk when I can get strangers to pay to listen to me talk?" And that's when I got the idea of touring. — Ellen DeGeneres

I can't be any more addicted to it than I already am,"Jamie said slowly, as though he'd rehearsed this, and then waiting for a cue Nick obviously had no intention of giving." Think about crack!" Jamie added, clearly struck by insperation. "Yes! It's like I'm a crack addict, and you're my friend the drug dealer who gives me crack for free, and I know you're just trying to be a good friend, but every time I think 'Wow, this crack might be a little bit of a problem for me,' you're there to say, 'Have some more delicious crack.' Am I making sense?"
Nick stared."Hardly ever in your life. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I, um, I have this problem. I broke up with my boyfriend, you see. And I'm pretty upset about it, so I wanted to talk to my best friend. [ ... ] The thing is, they're both you. — Jodi Picoult

If you wanna make a friend, solve a problem for them. No problem to solve? Create one. — Michael Weston

There's a woman I see who's not my therapist, but she's like an old friend who's a therapist in profession. She lets me talk to her like a therapist once in a while, and she does a great thing. Whenever I have a big dilemma, like this is a big problem in my life, she always says, 'Wow, you're going to have to figure that out.' — Louis C.K.

I have a family, loving aunts, and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything except my one true friend. All I think about when I'm with friends is having a good time. I can't bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don't seem to be able to get any closer, and that's the problem. — Anne Frank

I heard my old friend Clem's voice coming back to me through the dimness of thirty years: "I see you coming here trying to make sense where there is no sense. Try just living in it. Respond, alter, see what happens." I thought of the African way of perceiving life, as experience to be lived rather than as problem to be solved. — Audre Lorde

That's it: watch your moods. Don't let people see you fluctuate. Don't let yourself run your mouth. Never ever cry, even alone, because your cat or your kettle might tell. Always smile, but don't laugh loudly. Mania is an extrovert, but if you need to vent, tell your mattress or maybe your therapist, but put nothing in writing and never tell a friend or coworker how you're really feeling. Downplay any problem or joy. Pay attention to any signs that your life is shitty or excellent, because either is an illusion. Be careful around men, especially ones with big arms or opinions. Stop talking. — Elissa Washuta

I observed an eighteen-year-old friend of one of our daughters talking to his mother on the telephone. As he hung up the phone in frustration he said, "She makes me so angry, she's always telling me what to think and where to go and how to do things." He was obviously upset and filled with anger. I told him he had one of two choices. He could either continue to practice being right, or practice being kind. If you insist on being right you will argue, get frustrated, angry, and your problem will persist with your mom, I explained. If you simply practice being kind, you can remind yourself that this is your mom, she's always been that way, she will very likely stay that way, but you are going to send her love instead of anger when she starts in with her routine. A simple statement of kindness such as, "That's a good point, Mom, I'll think about it," and you have a spiritual solution to your problem. — Wayne W. Dyer

You begin to notice what it is that makes this person a teacher, beyond the limits of his individuality and personality. Thus the principle of the "universality of the guru" comes into the picture as well. Every problem you face in life is a part of your marriage. Whenever you experience difficulties, you hear the words of the guru. This is the point at which one begins to gain one's independence from the guru as lover, because every situation becomes an expression of the teachings. First you surrendered to your spiritual friend. Then you communicated and played games with him. And now you have come to the state of complete openness. As a result of this openness you begin to see the guru-quality in every life-situation, that all situations in life offer you the opportunity to be as open as you are with the guru, and so all things can become the guru. — Chogyam Trungpa

For we all make mistakes from time to time, myself included. What's important is that we learn from those mistakes. I remember being told by the great Derek Bevan, a good friend and my refereeing coach, that there is nothing wrong with making a mistake; it's when you make the same mistake again that you have a problem. — Nigel Owens

Today, when people say they cannot believe, it is not a mental problem; it is a matter of the will of the heart- they do not want to believe. Some say they have certain 'mental reservations,' mental hurdles which they cannot get over. My friend, your mind is not big enough to take even one little hurdle. The problem is never in the mind but in the will. There is sin in the life, and a man does not want to turn to God; he does not want to believe Him. — J. Vernon McGee

Ally." Peeta says the words slowly, tasting it. "Friend. Lover. Victor. Enemy. Fiancee. Target. Mutt. Neighbor. Hunter. Tribute. Ally. I'll add it to the list of words I use to try to figure you out. The problem is, I can't tell what's real anymore, and what's made up. — Suzanne Collins

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

After the second chapter of Days of Obligation, which is about the death of a friend of mine from AIDS, was published in Harper's, I got this rather angry letter from a gay-and-lesbian group that was organizing a protest against the magazine. It was the same old problem: political groups have almost no sense of irony. — Richard Rodriguez

People often speak of hell, not wanting to go there, avoiding it..etc. I never had that problem because hell is a state of mind. Look around you; rape, murder, wars, hatred, envy ... my friend; you're already there!! — Sandra Chami Kassis

See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum ... and one night, one night they decide they don't like living in an asylum any more. They decide they're going to escape! So, like, they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moon light ... stretching away to freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend didn't dare make the leap. Y'see ... Y'see, he's afraid of falling. So then, the first guy has an idea ... He says 'Hey! I have my flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me!' B-but the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says ... He says 'Wh-what do you think I am? Crazy? You'd turn it off when I was half way across! — Alan Moore

Or maybe that wasn't the time it snowed. Maybe it was the time we slept in the truck and I rolled over on the bunnies and flattened them. It doesn't matter. What's important for me to remember now is that early the next morning the snow was melted off the windshield and the daylight woke me up. A mist covered everything and, with the sunshine, was beginning to grow sharp and strange. The bunnies weren't a problem yet, or they'd already been a problem and were already forgotten, and there was nothing on my mind. I felt the beauty of the morning. I could understand how a drowning man might suddenly feel a deep thirst being quenched. Or how a slave might become a friend to his master. — Denis Johnson

Objections to verbification in English tend to be motivated by personal taste, not clarity. Verbed words are usually easily understood. When a word like 'friend' is declared not a verb, the problem isn't that it's confusing; it's that the protester finds it deeply annoying. — Erin McKean

Kaysen elaborates through parts of the book on her thoughts about how mental illness is treated. She explains that families who are willing to pay the rather high costs of hospitalization do so to prove their own sanity. Once one member of the family is hospitalized, it becomes easier for the rest of the family to distance themselves from the problem and to create a clear boundary between the sane and the insane. Recognizing a family member or friend as insane makes others around them, says Kaysen, compare themselves to that individual. Hospitalization allows for distance from this questioning of self that makes us so uncomfortable. Her view that mental illness often includes the entire family means the hospitalized family member becomes an excuse for other family members not to look at their own problems. This explains the willingness to pay the high financial costs of hospitalization. — Susanna Kaysen

Eventually we discovered Bleeker Bob's in the West Village on 118 West Third Street. One time I was there I literally tried to rip the first Iron Maiden album out of the hands of a friend of mine. [...] I was having a tug-of-war with this guy over who was gonna buy it. [...] If I hadn't won, I would've gone home and gotten my shitty little tape recorder that you have to use two fingers to push play and record on, and I would've brought that to my friend's house and held it in front of a speaker to tape the record so I'd have something to listen to until I could find another copy. Yeah, it'd sound terrible but so what? We didn't know anything else. When I hear people say, 'I hate MP3s, they sound like shit,' I'm like, 'Fuck you, you hae no idea, you first-world-problem-having motherfucker. — Scott Ian

Open-source software shows the potential of social norms. In the case of Linux and other collaborative projects, you can post a problem about a bug on one of the bulletin boards and see how fast someone, or often many people, will react to your request and fix the software-using their own leisure time. Could you pay for this level of service? Most likely. But if you had to hire people of the same caliber they would cost you an arm and a leg. Rather, people in these communities are happy to give their time to society at large (for which they get the same social benefits we all get from helping a friend paint a room). What can we learn from this that is applicable to the business world? There are social rewards that strongly motivate behavior-and one of the least used in corporate life is the encouragement of social rewards and reputation. — Dan Ariely

You know what your problem is, Justina? You're in desperate need of a good shag. "Not that I'm offering you one myself, mind. My days as a whore ended back in the seventeen hundreds."
The gin was abruptly sucked back into my lungs as I gasped. He did not just tell my mother about his former profession; sweet Jesus, let me have heard incorrectly!
I hadn't, and Bones went right on. " ... But I have a friend who owes me a favor and he could be persuaded to ... Kitten, are you all right?"
I'd stopped breathing as soon as he casually admitted to his prior occupation. Add that to the liquid stuck in my lungs, and no, I wasn't all right. — Jeaniene Frost

If," we say readily, "God is holy and omnipotent, He would interfere and stop all this kind of thing"
meaning by "this kind of thing" wars, persecutions, cruelty, Hitlerism, Bolshevism, or whatever large issue happens to be distressing our minds at the time. But let us be quite sure that we have really considered the problem in all its aspects.
"Why doesn't God smite this dictator dead?" is a question a little remote from us. Why, madam, did He not strike you dumb and imbecile before you uttered that baseless and unkind slander the day before yesterday? Or me, before I behaved with such cruel lack of consideration to that well-meaning friend? And why, sir, did He not cause your hand to rot off at the wrist before you signed your name to that dirty little bit of financial trickery? — Dorothy L. Sayers

My friend, only focus on things that you can control. If you have a fixable problem, fix it. If it is not fixable, move on to something that is. — Clay Clark

As in the old Irish blessing, may God give you, for every storm, a rainbow; for every tear, a smile. For every care, a promise; a blessing for every trial. For every problem life sends, a faithful friend to share; for every sigh, a sweet song, and an answer for every prayer. — Sandra D. Bricker

Some of my best friends are like, "I love that you are just the biggest pussy on the planet." And I have no problem with it at all, I love it. But it took a long time to understand that that's a part of my tapestry. — Zoe Bell

You're brooding, Leonard, my friend. What's the problem?"
"I blew it with Fitzgerald."
"I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. It was more like a nuclear disaster. — Joe R. Lansdale

Sex is not a wizard, whatever magical-seeming properties it might possess in its better forms. If your friend says to you, "You're being mean, you need to get laid," your problem is not sex. Your problems are that you might be acting like an asshole, and your friends are definitely idiots. — Katie Heaney

This is a huge strategic problem for Labour. Mr Laws is a magnificent deployer of Tina; every particular cut he makes, every specific tax increase, is justified on the basis that There Is No Alternative, and that anyone who says different is a Flat Earther. But if Labour complains, it encounters Tina's new boy-friend Alf - All Labour's Fault. — David Aaronovitch

The problem is that I'm Josef Weber's friend. but Reiner Hartmann is my enemy. So what do I do, now that they are the same man? — Jodi Picoult

Forget what you learned about poetry in school. (That it's complex, opaque, a problem to be solved in 1500 words by tomorrow.) Poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. It holds the cadence of common life. It has a passion for truth and justice and liberty; it is a buoy to people in ordinary trouble: to a friend whose life has gone skidding into the meridian, who has been struck by bad news, who is frying eggs and hash browns and has whiny child clinging to his pant leg. — Garrison Keillor