It All About Friendship Quotes & Sayings

What do I know about love? Not much-that's the safe answer. Even when I think I have a grasp on it, something comes along to make me realize I don't know anything at all. It's just a concept to me. It's the thing that all the songs are written about, the thing that makes smart people act stupidly. If I can make love a concept, it makes me a better observer. And it also leaves a place inside of me hollow. Sometimes I can actually feel it. To reach down inside that part-I wonder how it would feel, to touch a void. That nameless empty.
This makes me seem lonely, which isn't really true. I have other parts of me - friendship, for one - which compensate for the void. I can't feel the nothingness except in those rare times when there's nothing else to feel. — David Levithan

For me, there are distinct levels of friendship:
BEST FRIEND: An extremely close individual you can do anything with, talk about everything with, confide in, and be comfortable with sitting in silence on car journeys; those people you consider to be part of your family
GOOD FRIEND: A person you are comfortable hanging out with one-on-one for an extended period of time and see semiregularly; someone who shares experiences with you but not your deepest troubles and secrets
FRIEND: Someone you hang out with in a group setting occasionally
Acquaintance: Someone you know on a first-name basis and say "hi" to but that's pretty much the extent of it
STRANGERS: The rest of the world (and all your potential best friends in the future) — Connor Franta

It had always been the two of them through everything -every adventure and every expedition- and now there was this awful distance between them, and she tried not to think about all the stories they were missing out on, all the litle moments and bigger milestones that had happened over the past few weeks without the other knowing — Jennifer E. Smith

We watch her walk into the spotlight she's been been hiding from most of her life. Sure, friendship is all about believing in someone so hard they believe it, too. Sure, it's about trust. But if anyone hurts her tonight, it's about ripping them apart with my bare hands and really enjoying it. — Cath Crowley

Sociologists of regulation - such people exist - talk about something called 'regulatory capture'. This is the process whereby a state regulator ends up promoting the interests of the industry it is supposed to monitor, at the expense of the public interest. It can happen for a number of reasons, and many of them are very human. For example, if you work in the technical business o f drug approval and pharmacovigilance, who can you chat to about your day's work? To your partner, it's all baffling and pedantic; but to the people in the regulatory affairs division of the companies you work with every day, they understand. You have so much in common with them. So industry bodies - not even necessarily the pharmaceutical companies themselves - might offer things as intangible as friendship, and opportunities to socialize. — Ben Goldacre

It's all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies; our enemies can never hurt us very much. But oh, what about forgiving our friends? — Willa Cather

I'd forgotten that the best part of dating wasn't the actual dating at all but the talking about it: the analysis of potential new boyfriends with your girlfriends. — Liane Moriarty

You do NOT fear your OWN ability to COMMIT. Just think about your unwavering dedication to your career, your notion of sisterhood and friendship. You are tireless. That is why we all lean on you. Because you are totally committed to the lot of us. You do not have a "fear of commitment" that's just an easy way out of all of this. What you have dearest one, is a deep seated and totally understandable fear of OTHER people's commitment to YOU.
I totally wholeheartedly agree, you've never been in love. Until Zac, you've chosen chaps whom you've simply liked but who have loved you. so when it's over, it hasn't hurt you.
Why have you done this, over all these years? I'll tell you why, because what YOU actually fear is being left by someone YOU love.
Your fear of COMMITMENT centres solely on another's commitment to YOU'It makes — Freya North

He turned toward the bookshelf, his back to her, saying nothing. He held out one hand and she gave him the Eliot to shelve. His voice was rough. "'Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.'"
Caroline stepped back into her heels. "I always thought she stole that line from Homer. He was all about the 'winged words' in the Odyssey, and then Eliot comes along with that line and everyone falls all over it."
Brooks seemed to be examining the shelf again. "I thought you liked George Eliot."
"I do. I think she was brilliant. But what does that line mean, anyway? Is it about influence? Writing? Distance?" She shrugged, wishing he would step away from the books and turn around.
"Maybe it means that sometimes what we say doesn't come across the way we mean it to." He finally turned, his lips tilted up a bit at the corners. "I always liked 'nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.' I think that's the perfect Eliot quote for the moment we head off to a garden party. — Mary Jane Hathaway

You can be just friends with people, you know," Orla said. "I think it's crazy how you're in love with all those raven boys."
Orla wasn't wrong, of course. But what she didn't realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analyzing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer and longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another or thinking about when next they would be with one another. Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she'd had this kind, she didn't want the other. — Maggie Stiefvater

Love is about feeling that there is something bigger than just ourselves and our own worries and existence. Whether it is love of another person, of country, of God, of an idea, love is fundamentally an intense devotion to this notion that something is bigger than us. Love is ultimately larger than friendship, comfort, ceremony, knowledge, or joy. Indeed, as the Four Wise Ones once said, it may be all you need. — Daniel Levitin

Friends are a weird thing. It seems like they know all about you, but then they don't understand you at all. — Natsuo Kirino

Still, Logen had won over tougher audiences, in his time. Threetrees, Tul Duru, Black Dow, Harding Grim, he'd fought each one in single combat, and beaten them all. Spared each man's life, and left him bound to follow. Each one had tried their best to kill him, and with good reasons too, but in the end Logen had earned their trust, and their respect, and their friendship even. Small gestures and a lot of time, that was how he'd done it. 'Patience is the chief of virtues,' his father used to say, and 'you won't cross the mountains in a day.' Time might be against them, but there was nothing to be gained by rushing. You have to be realistic about these things. Logen — Joe Abercrombie

Every place where we were together was a symbol of our youth and our blissful ignorance of the world. It was our tiny bubble of happiness. And as I looked carefully at them, memorizing their faces and everything I was able to see about them, I mentally made a toast. Here's to all the sleepless nights and to our existence. — Kia Amazona

only good friends know what is inside your heart. sometimes a good friend becomes your lover. please do not hesitate to tell him/her that you love him/her. it is good to have that friend itself as your partner because he/ she knows all about you. — Joseph Mathew

Do you know what the worst thing about literature is? . What? I said. That you end up being friends with writers. And friendship, treasure though it may be, destroys your critical sense. Once, said Don Pancracio, Monteforte Toledo dropped this riddle in my lap: a poet is lost in a city on the verge of collapse, with no money, or friends, or anyone to turn to. And of course, he neither wants nor plans to turn to anyone. For several days he roams the city and the country, eating nothing, or eating scraps. He's even stopped writing. Or he writes in his head: in other words, he hallucinates. All signs point to an imminent death. His drastic disappearance foreshadows it. And yet the poet doesn't die. — Roberto Bolano

It felt as though they were the only people in the world, two young women about to bury the symbol of their helplessness, as if that's all it would take to make them whole again. — Sarah Addison Allen

Was life too short? Of course- there was never enough time to do all the things you wanted to do. And of course not- if it were any longer, you'd appreciate it even less than you already did.

Was it better to live primarily for the good of yourself, or for the good of others? For the good of yourself, of course- it was madness to take responsibility for other people's happiness. And for others, of course- selfishness was just another way to isolate yourself, when everyone knew that true happiness was all about friendship and love. — Tommy Wallach

He glanced over at Luthar, sneering down into his bowl as though it was full of piss. No respect. He glanced over at Ferro, staring yellow knives at him through narrowed eyes. No trust. He shook his head sadly. Without trust and respect the group would fall apart in a fight like walls without mortar.
Still, Logen had won over tougher audiences, in his time. Threetrees, Tul Duru, Black Dow, Harding Grim, he'd fought each one in single combat, and beaten them all. Spared each man's life, and left him bound to follow. Each one had tried their best to kill him, and with good reasons too, but in the end Logen had earned their trust, and their respect, and their friendship even. Small gestures and a lot of time, that was how he'd done it. 'Patience is the chief of virtues,' his father used to say, and 'you won't cross the mountains in a day.' Time might be against them, but there was nothing to be gained by rushing. You have to be realistic about these things. — Joe Abercrombie

the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are - not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving - and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad - or good - it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. — Hanya Yanagihara

You won't understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are - not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving - and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad - or good - it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well. — Hanya Yanagihara

He grinned again. We'd only been seeing each other for a few weeks now, but this easy give-and-take still surprised me. From that very first day in my room, I felt like we'd somehow skipped the formalities of the Beginning of a Relationship: those awkward moments when you're not all over each other and are still feeling out the other person's boundaries and limits. Maybe this was because we'd been circling each other for a while before he finally catapulted through my window. But if I let myself think about it much - and I didn't - I had flashes of realising that I'd been comfortable with him even at the very start. Clearly, he'd been comfortable with me, grabbing my hand as he had that first day. As if he knew, even then, that we'd be here now. — Sarah Dessen

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can be refuted by science: mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy. — Bertrand Russell

What hurts this person is not the occurrence itself, for another person might not feel oppressed by this situation at all. What is hurting this person is the response he or she has uncritically adopted. It is not a demonstration of kindness or friendship to the people we care about to join them in indulging in wrongheaded, negative feelings. — Epictetus

I've gone to school with the same kids since kindergarten. And they knew what I was long before I did. I was uncool by FOURTH GRADE. How is it even possible to be an uncool fourth grader? Didn't we all just string together friendship bracelets and daydream about horses and pretend to solve mysteries back then? — Leila Sales

Don't worry about hurting me, Jordan." She brushed back her hair again as she turned from him and headed for the bedroom. "It was too late for that a long time ago."
...
"I've heard the lecture," she informed him as she glared back at him. "I've heard you tell your men how love is an illusion, and how they need to watch their backs before that illusion bites him on the ass, so many times it sickens me. Unless you have something original to add to it, then I don't want to hear it again, if you don't mind."
...
"You're fooling yourself." He had to force the words past his lips. "You're letting lust and pleasure betray you. Tehya. It tricks you. When it fades, all you have left is either friendship or enmity. It's the enmity that worries me, the knowledge of all the little ways you can destroy one another with the knowledge you've gained. I don't want us to go that route. I don't want you to hate me."
...
"Who ruined you before I ever had a chance at your heart? — Lora Leigh

In life we stumble across a lot of things and people who we believe are irreplaceable. But nothing really is irreplaceable until we ensure so. It's all about what we really want. — Mansi Soni

Because most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves, they run about loose, hungering for employment, and satisfy themselves in various supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations, which have all to do with making things already made, is the making of people: it is called the art of friendship. — Laura Riding

If you have a grateful heart (which is a miracle amongst you statesmen), show it by directing the bearer to the best wine in town, and pray let not this highest point of sacred friendship be performed slightly, but go about it with all due deliberation and care, as holy priests to sacrifice, or as discreet thieves to the wary performance of burglary and shop-lifting. Let your well-discerning palate (the best judge about you) travel from cellar to cellar and then from piece to piece till it has lighted on wine fit for its noble choice and my approbation. — John Wilmot

Jaxton smiled and caught his hand, holding it tight in both of his. "Are you burnt out? Is it all too much?" he asked, getting straight to the root of the matter, in one go.
"Yes," he sighed, hating that it was true.
"Then you'll stay home."
"You know I can't. It's impossible," Roman complained about the unfairness of it all.
He was due to return to the studio in two days times, to finalise the tracks he'd recorded yesterday. Then he had to sit down with Jalen next week, to pick out a new piece of his artwork for the next album cover. And two weeks after that, he had three interviews with three different music channels, to film.
"Try telling that to Ben." Jaxton winked at him, then ducked down to kiss him.

~ From the Heart — Elaine White

And you just had to rush right over here to rub my face in it."
"Nope. I rushed right over here to slap your face in it."
"A rude but effective wake-up call," Laura commented and earned a shocked stare.
"I expected better from you."
"You shouldn't have." Hands brisk and competent, she affixed a shiny silver bow to the box. "If you don't want to tell us what happened between you and Josh,fine.But you can't expect us to sit around quietly while you mope."
"I have not been moping."
"We've been cleaning up the blood spilling out of your heart for weeks." Kate passed Laura her credit card. "Face it,pal, you're just no fun anymore."
"And that's all this friendship is about?Fun? I thought I might get a little support,a little sympathy, a little compassion."
"Sorry," Laura imprinted the card with a steady sweep. "Fresh out. — Nora Roberts

I love 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' and 'Extras' and also 'The Trip.' That had all the nuances of friendship and finding things out about their lives without it being too much plot-driven. — Dolly Wells

Friendship isn't about who you've known the longest. It's all about the friend who comes and stands by your side in bad times. — Charles M. Schulz

We spent all those years talking about stuff we had in common, and the last few months noticing all the ways we were different and it broke both of our hearts. — Nick Hornby

2
NOTES
"You broke your other appointment, didn't you?"
"I did not! I told you on the phone - these people canceled at the last minute - "
"Oh, Geo dear, come off it! You know, I sometimes think, about you, whenever you do something really sweet, you're ashamed of it afterwords! You knew jolly well how badly I needed you tonight, so you broke that appointment. I could tell you were fibbing, the minute you opened your mouth! You and I can't pull the wool over each other's eyes. I found that out, long ago. Haven't you - after all these years?"
"I certainly should have," he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally accepted bit of nonsense it is that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. — Christopher Isherwood

You don't know what the story is about when you're in the middle of it. All you can do is keep walking. At the beginning, you have buoyancy and a little arrogance. The journey looks beautiful and bright, and you are filled with resolve and silver strength, sure that you will face it with optimism and chutzpah. And the end is beautiful. You are wiser, better, deeper. The end is revelation, resolution, a soft place to land. But, oh, the middle. The middle is fog, exhaustion, loneliness, the daily battle against despair and the nagging fear that tomorrow will be just like today, only you'll be wearier and less able to defend yourself against it. All you can ask for, in the middle, are sweet moments of reprieve in the company of people you love. For a few hours, you'll feel protected by the goodness of friendship and life around the table, and that's the best thing I can imagine. — Shauna Niequist

How could I have been so stupid? All this time, I've been certain he feels the same way about me. I was so sure that my feelings were requited that I'd convinced myself he was just getting up the courage to confess. But I was wrong. Garrett's feelings for me are nothing but friendship - plain, simple, and overwhelmingly platonic. I built his love out of thin air, I realize in horror - crafted it from e-mails and late-night conversations as if my sheer will would make it so.
It was all in my head. Again! — Abby McDonald

She had that thing most people don't have - curiosity. She might not have always got the right answers, but she wanted to ask the questions. It's very hard if you are interested in ideas and all that, ideas and the philosophies of the past, it's very hard to find someone around here to really talk to. That's the tragedy of the thing really I mean, when you think about it. Certainly I can't find anyone around here to talk to anymore. And for a woman it's even harder you see. They can feel very trapped - because of the patriarchy. I do feel everyone needs to have these little chats now and then. — Zadie Smith

Man is not to fight with other human races, other human individuals, but his work is to bring about reconciliation and Peace and to restore the bonds of friendship and love. We are not like fighting beasts. It is the life of self which is predominating in our life, the self which is creating the seclusion, giving rise to sufferings, to jealousy and hatred, to political and commercial competition. All these illusions will vanish, if we go down to the heart of — Rabindranath Tagore

It's too weird to think about - how death seems to rewrite all the rules. People who never talked to each other can suddenly cry together. People who used to be close can hardly bear to be in the same room. — Cat Clarke

It became very clear to the director that it would be foolish not to use our friendship. I had tried to talk to him about it because all the relationships in the film are so, not negative, but antagonistic. There's not a lot of love going around. — Jennifer Beals

I'd just started to realise how important it was to intersperse my 80 Dates with some normal socialising, preferably with female friends. Dating was really demanding: there was all the stress of preparation and anticipation. Then there was the date intself: fraught with revealing body-language and full of silent 'I can't believe he just said that' moments.
...I needed relaxed, 'no agenda' fun with girlfriends to help offset the pressure of dating and stop me obsessing about 'I can't believe I just said that' moments of my own. — Jennifer Cox

Our friendship was like our writing in some ways. It was the only thing that was interesting about our otherwise dull lives. We were better off when we were together. Together we were a small society of ambition and high ideals. We were tender and patient and kind. We were not like the world at all. — Ann Patchett

The Twelve Chairs is about the same thing. It's all about money or love. We know we need money, we know we have to get money, we know we have to hurt others to get money. But we don't know until maybe it's a little too late in life that love is the most important thing. Love, friendship, affection, bonhomie, whatever. Those are the only things that really count: to love and be loved. — Mel Brooks

He thought, in your most secret dreams you cut a niche for yourself, and it is finished early, and then you wait for someone to come along to fill it - but to fill it exactly, every cut, curve, hollow and plane of it. And people do come along, and one covers up the niche, and another rattles around inside it, and another is so surrounded by fog that for the longest time you don't know if she fits or not; but each of them hits you with a tremendous impact. And then one comes along and slips in so quietly that you don't know when it happened, and fits so well you almost can't feel anything at all. And that is it.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked him.
He told her, immediately and fully. She nodded as if he had been talking about cats or cathedrals or cam-shafts, or anything else beautiful and complex. She said, "That's right. It isn't all there, of course. It isn't even enough. But everything else isn't enough without it."
"What is 'everything else'? — Theodore Sturgeon

He showed the fineness of his nature by being kinder to me after that misunderstanding than before. Nay, the very incident which, by my theory, must in some degree estrange me and him, changed, indeed, somewhat our relations; but not in the sense I painfully anticipated. An invisible, but a cold something, very slight, very transparent, but very chill: a sort of screen of ice had hitherto, all through our two lives, glazed the medium through which we exchanged intercourse. Those few warm words, though only warm with anger, breathed on that frail frost-work of reserve; about this time, it gave note of dissolution. I think from that day, so long as we continued friends, he never in discourse stood on topics of ceremony with me. — Charlotte Bronte

The thing is, that when you're young, you always think you'll meet all sorts of wonderful people, that drifting apart and losing friends is natural. You don't worry, at first, about the friends you leave behind. But as you get older, it gets harder to build friendships. Too many defenses, too little opportunity. You get busy. And by the time you realize that you've lost the dearest best friend you've ever had, years have gone by and you're mature enough to be embarrassed by your attitude and, frankly, by your arrogance. — Kate Jacobs

Ivy had once said that sharing blood was a way to show deep affection, loyalty, and friendship. I felt that way about her, but what she wanted from me was so far from what I understood that I was afraid. She wanted to share with me something so complex and intangible that the shallow emotional vocabulary of human and witch didn't have the words or cultural background to define it. She was waiting for me to figure it out. And I lumped it all with sex because I didn't understand. — Kim Harrison

It's funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine. — Sarah Dessen

The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers ... of all men to the extent they desire to know. But in fact, this includes only a few, the true friends, as Plato was to Aristotle at the very moment they were disagreeing about the nature of the good ... They were absolutely one soul as they looked at the problem. This, according to Plato, is the only real friendship, the only real common good. It is here that the contact people so desperately seek is to be found ... This is the meaning of the riddle of the improbable philosopher-kings. They have a true community that is exemplary for all other communities. — Allan Bloom

In our friendship I had spent a lot of time telling Lucy to pull herself up, to get over the past and move on. That was my role, the best of my Catholic education in action, and I didn't worry about it because I knew that she had other friends, friends who were as close to her as I was, who were more tender. She had practical friends and emotional friends, friends with big houses to crash in and friends who were good for wild fun, and she knit us together to find the perfect balance of what she needed from all of us. — Ann Patchett

When I arrived back at Intro to Basic Art again later that week, I thought for a moment we had a new student who didn't know about the assigned seats. Sitting at my table was a girl in a long flowered dress, very vintage-hippie. She actually was wearing real flowers in her hair, and hardly any make up. I sat down, ready to explain to this poor lost soul that the seat was already taken, when I looked again and realized it was the same girl. I ended up not saying anything at all; I couldn't think of anything that wouldn't be rude or just plain stupid. — J.M. Richards

What was it about needy girls? Jules wondered. They felt like they had the right to be needy, because they knew that other people would be interested in - although annoyed at - their needs. ... They got all the attention. Boys turned their focus toward them, and messy situations results. — Meg Wolitzer

You know, Maneck, the human face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying."
"What a nice saying," he answered bitterly.
"Right now, Dinabai's face, and Om's, and mine are all occupied. Worrying about work and money, and where to sleep tonight. But that does not mean we are not sad. It may not show on the face, but it's sitting inside here." He placed his hand over his heart. "In here, there is limitless room- happiness, kindness, sorrow, anger, friendship- everything fits in here. — Rohinton Mistry

Laughing at "Rapper's Delight"'s no revenge, and anyway it wasn't your idea, and anyway it's funny. Dean Street's another story, a realm of knowledge unapplicable here.
You've just about finished leaving Dean Street, and Aeroman, behind.
If this means avoiding the one who protected your ass all through junior high, the one you once ached to emulate, the one whose orbit you were happy just to swing in - if it means leaving the million-dollar kid's regular phone messages in Abraham's precise handwriting unreturned - that's a small price to pay for growing up, isn't it?
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around.
It's the end, the end of the seventies. — Jonathan Lethem

Taylor Swift is great for a night out as it involves a lot of tequila. With her it's all about good friends and celebrating friendship, it's such a positive environment to be a part of. She's great. — Nick Jonas

It shouldn't have happened at all, but their friendship had been cemented in only the time it took to get to school that morning - Adam demonstrating how to fasten the Camaro's ground wire more securely, Gansey lifting Adam's bike halfway into the trunk so they could ride to school together, Adam confessing he worked at a mechanic's to put himself through Aglionby, and Gansey turning to the passenger seat and asking, What do you know about Welsh kings? — Maggie Stiefvater

I never realized what a big deal that was. How amazing it is to find someone who wants to hear about all the things that go on in your head. You just think that things will stay the way they are. You never look up, in a moment that feels like every other moment in your life, and think, "Soon this will be over". But I understand more now. About the way life works. — Nina LaCour

One of the most delightful things about gardening is the freemasonry it gives with other gardeners, and the interest and pleasure all gardeners get by visiting other people's gardens. We all have a lot to learn and in every new garden there is a chance of finding inspiration - new flowers, different arrangement or fresh treatment for old subjects. Even if it is a garden you know by heart there are twelve months in the year and every month means a different garden, and the discovery of things unexpected all the rest of the year. — Margery Fish

February 13, 1936
I ask of people more than they can give me. It is useless to maintain the contrary. But what a mistake and what despair. And myself perhaps ...
Seek contacts. All contacts. If I want to write about men, should I stop talking about the countryside? If the sky or light attract me, shall I forget the eyes or voices of those I love? Each time I am given the elements of a friendship, the fragments of an emotion, never the emotion or the friendship itself. — Albert Camus

True friendship is not about what others can bring to you. It is not about having someone there for you when you need them. It is about what you can give to them and longing to be with them when they find themselves in need, all of which is repaid to you with the fulfillment of the promise that you will never be alone. — Steve Marchand

Writing enters into us when it gives us information about ourselves we are in need of *at the time that we are reading.* How obvious the thought seems once it has been articulated! As with love, politics, or friendship: readiness is all. — Vivian Gornick

This book is based on the conviction that it is not possible for women to be free, nor to be realistic about the state of female existence in a man-made world, nor to struggle against those forces that are waged against us all, nor to win, if we do not have a vision of female friendship - if women do not come to realize how profound are the possibilities of being for each other as well as how deeply men have hidden these possibilities from us. — Janice Raymond

Why had I failed to realize the depth of Mary's faith despite all those
letters? She'd certainly done her best to share it. The answer came to me in
the midst of my own faith journey, one that seemed to begin the night my
mother died and was jump-started when I lost David seventeen months later.
Why hadn't I seen it?
Simple. I wasn't looking.
According to Jeremiah 29:13 in the Bible, "You will seek me and find
me when you seek me with all your heart" (NIV). It wasn't about Mary at all. It was about me. It wasn't until my mother's death that I began actively
seeking God. I didn't see Mary's Christian example because I hadn't yet
developed spiritually. I wasn't "there" yet. I didn't recognize true faith
because I didn't have my own. — Mary Potter Kenyon

But I can't control my dreams. I can't even remember them. For all I know I'm having the time of my life when I sleep, but I just can't remember. So I'm forced to live in a life I have no control over. A life where I'm either numb to everything or terrified of every thought that crosses my mind. If this is all just a dream, then it sure is a disappointing one.

But I still have time to try and control my dreams. I have time to try and make my dreams a reality in this waking life as well. The one bloody thing I have is time. I've got to remember that. I still have time. And despite everything, there is something reassuring about that. — F.K. Preston

I want you to judge me without thinking about it.
I want you to give me advice without considering my opinion.
I want you to expecting anything without the need to trust me.
I want you to decide for me with all the care in the world.
I want you to help me without smothering me.
I want you to decide without seeing my point of view.
I want you to hug me without holding me...
I want you to feel protected in my presence without me having to lie.
I want you to be close without suffocating me.
I want you to know everything without knowing anything...
I want you to know that both love and friendship should always be Unconditional. — Stefan Dimov

Marriage should be about fun," she says gently. "It's about friendship, and laughter, and trust, and fun. If it's not fun, if you take it all too seriously, what's the point? You know I've been with Andy for fifteen years, and the reason it still works is because he's my best friend and he still makes me laugh. Admittedly, not all the time, and often we get completely bogged down in work, and the kids, and life, but he's still the person I most want to phone when anything happens in life, and he's still the person who makes me laugh the most. — Jane Green

For us of course the shared activity and therefore the companionship on which Friendship supervenes will not often be a bodily one like hunting or fighting. It may be a common religion, common studies, a common profession, even a common recreation. All who share it will be our companions; but one or two or three who share something more will be our Friends. In this kind of love, as Emerson said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth? - Or at least, "Do you care about the same truth?" The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer. — C.S. Lewis

That's the big mistake a lot of people make when they wonder how soldiers can put their lives on the line day after day or how they can fight for something they may not believe in. Not everyone does. I've worked with soldiers on all sides of the political spectrum; I've met some who hated the army and others who wanted to make it a career. I've met geniuses and idiots, but when all is said and done,we do what we do for one another. For friendship. Not for country, not for patriotism, not because we're programmed killing machines, but because of the guy next to you. You fight for your friend, to keep him alive, and he fights for you, and everything about the army is built on this simple premise. — Nicholas Sparks

There was this girl," I said. "l mean-" All of a sudden I felt flustered, and added, "We were just friends."
"No such thing."
"We were."
"Look. Despite what you may have heard, people have sex all the time with people they don't love, or particulary care about, or sometimes can't even stand. So why in the world do people say that it's just friends, like it doesn't mean as much, if you're not having sex? Real friendship is true and forever and with all your heart. It's not Relationship Lite. — Emily Horner

I would like to tell about war and friendship among the various parts of the body, the arms that do battle with the feet, and the veins that make love with the arteries, or the bones with the marrow. All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.' Then I realize that an equally beautiful story can be told, inventing an original duel, for example, a man fighting and convincing his adversary to deny God, then running him through so that he dies damned ... — Umberto Eco

I know you're just trying to be kind. But the world isn't always kind. So sometimes you have to know what you're up against, and match it.' He held up a hand to stop the words about to be spoken; I could see the vague shape of it hovering in the blackness. 'I know it's not right to fight fire with fire. But sometimes, it's all we've got." His voice grew soft, and, in the darkness, his hand found mine, squeezed. 'Don't put your fire out, Kaitlyn. Use it, or pass the torch. — Mackenzie Herbert

Before he'd met Anna, he'd thought he'd known what love was, thought he'd understood about friendship, romance, all of it, but he hadn't - not at all. Until he'd held Anna in his arms, until he'd let her see into his soul, until he'd heard her cry gently when he made love to her for the first time, he'd known nothing. And now, sometimes, when it was just the two of them, when he smelt her hair, caught her eye, he felt as though he knew all there was to know about everything, as though they knew the secret of life. A secret far more powerful than Longevity, far more long-lasting. — Gemma Malley

Friendship is all about opening up and letting in the highest-quality people you can find. It's about trusting a person enough to know that your dreams are supported and safe in his airspace, as well as supporting him in the same way when he needs it. — Sean Stephenson

Sometimes it's not all about the chocolate & the flowers & the jewelry & compliments. When you're dealing with real people & real feelings, sometimes it's about awkwardly presented offers of friendship. My advice is to recognize these for what they are, and make of them what you can, even if someone is giving you a metaphorical severed deer leg to get you to notice them. As I've recently learned, you never can tell where your best friends will come from in this life. — Johnny Virgil

We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another, which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice; and thence, besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of disgusts and, perhaps enmities where you may have occasion for friendship. I had caught it by reading my father's books of dispute about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinborough. — Benjamin Franklin

You're the one getting ready to bolt, Jesper. You just want me to run with you so you don't have to feel so bad about it. For all your love of a fight, you're always the first to talk about running for cover."
"I made a mistake. I let my bad get the best of my good, but for Saints' sake, Kaz, how long are you going to make me pay for a little forgiveness? [...] How many times have I had your back in a fight? How many times have I gotten it right? Doesn't that count for anything?" Jesper threw up his hands. "I can't win with you. No one can. — Leigh Bardugo

It was just that there was something newly powerful about this assembled family in the car. They were all growing up and into each other like trees striving together for the sun. — Maggie Stiefvater

We've made it private, contained it in family, when its audacity is in its potential to cross tribal lines. We've fetishized it as romance, when its true measure is a quality of sustained, practical care. We've lived it as a feeling, when it is a way of being. It is the elemental experience we all desire and seek, most of our days, to give and receive. The sliver of love's potential that the Greeks separated out as eros is where we load so much of our desire, center so much of our imagination about delight and despair, define so much of our sense of completion. There is the love the Greeks called filia - the love of friendship. There is the love they called agape - love as embodied compassion, expressions of kindness that might be given to a neighbor or a stranger. The Metta of the root Buddhist Pali tongue, "lovingkindness," carries the nuance of benevolent, active interest in others known and unknown, and its cultivation begins with compassion towards oneself. — Krista Tippett

Falling in love for the first time is a completely transcendent experience. It's like eating pizza-flavored ice cream. Your brain can't even process that level of joy. Love makes people do crazy things like kill other people or shop at Crate & Barrel. I think on some level it makes us all delusional. Deep down, our whole lives, no matter how low our self-esteem gets, we think, I have a special skill that no one knows about and if they knew they'd be amazed. And then eventually we meet someone who says, "You have a secret special skill." And you're like, "I know! So do you!" And they're like, "I know!" And then you're like, "We should eat pizza ice cream together." And that's what love is. It's this giant mound of pizza-flavored ice cream and delusion — Mike Birbiglia

My attitude toward friendship has remained the same. I will support and encourage you with all the love in my heart, but if it's not reciprocal, I gotta go [ ... ] If your friends are bitter about your success to the extent that they act out, don't expect them to change [ ... ] Move on. — RuPaul

Bromance--
It's all about the friendship! — Janalyn Robnett

Knowing your customer means knowing what your customer really wants. Maybe it is your product, but maybe there's something else, too: recognition, respect, reliability, concern, service, a feeling of self-importance, friendship, help - things all of us care more about as human beings than we care about malls or envelopes. — Harvey B. Mackay

How does she do it? She makes it sound like she is so cut up to be giving them this information, and it's all just bumph out of her head. She never told them ANYTHING. I don't think she's given them the right name of any airfield in Britain except Mainsend and Buscot, which of course were where she was stationed. They could have easily checked. It's all so close to truth, and so glib
her aircraft identification is rather good considering what a fuss she makes about it. It makes me think of the first day I met her, giving those directions in German. So cool and crisp, such authority
suddenly she really was a radio operator, a German radio operator, she was so good at faking it. Or when I told her to be Jamie, how she just suddenly turned into Jamie.
This confession of hers is rotten with error ... — Elizabeth Wein

Ive learnt the most about myself through the people and places i no longer visit, such an ironic exprience.
The greatest lessons are from those we give the keys of our hearts to & trust all too easily; realising later on, they are just apart of this grande' story and not everyone gets to make it to the end chapter & happy ever after. — Nikki Rowe

There came an awful day when I picked up the phone and knew at once, as one does with some old friends even before they speak, that it was Edward. He sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a well. I still thank my stars that I didn't say what I nearly said, because the good professor's phone pals were used to cheering or teasing him out of bouts of pessimism and insecurity when he would sometimes say ridiculous things like: 'I hope you don't mind being disturbed by some mere wog and upstart.' The remedy for this was not to indulge it but to reply with bracing and satirical stuff which would soon get the gurgling laugh back into his throat. But I'm glad I didn't say, 'What, Edward, splashing about again in the waters of self-pity?' because this time he was calling to tell me that he had contracted a rare strain of leukemia. Not at all untypically, he used the occasion to remind me that it was very important always to make and keep regular appointments with one's physician. — Christopher Hitchens

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

And that's how it was with Garrett. Because he understood me, the me I wanted so desperately to be. Think about your best friend - how you tell them everything, how they're the person who knows you best, all your deepest fears and insecurities. They're the one you call when something amazing happens or when everything falls apart and you need someone to come over and watch movies and tell you that everything's going to be OK. It's not like family, who are obligated to love you and even then sometimes fail to be everything they're supposed to be. Your true friend has chosen you, and you them, and that's a different kind of bond.
That's Garrett to me. I'm used to talking to him all the time, about the most meaningless stuff. To have him gone feels like a loss, an absence haunting me every day. Without him, there's just the empty space that used to be filled with laughter and friendship and comfort.
Can you really blame me for finding it so hard to let go? — Abby McDonald

Literary friendship is impossible, it seems; at least, it is impossible for me. Indeed, all male friendships outside of work sometimes seem to be impossible: you look at each other at the restaurant at some point in the conversation and you know that each of you is thinking, man, this is futile, why are we here, we're wasting our time, we have nothing to say, we're not involved in some project together that we can bitch about, we can't flirt, we feel like dummies discussing movies or books, we aren't in some moral bind with a woman that we need to confess, we've each said the other is a genius several times already, and the whole thing is depressing and the tone is false and we might as well go home to our wives and children and rent buddy movies like Midnight Run or Planes, Trains, and Automobiles or The Pope of Greenwich Village when we need a shot of the old camaraderie. — Nicholson Baker

I wish I could say we all lived happily ever after. I can't. But I can say we lived. Our love for Nate lives, and he's left us this piece of himself in his art; it was his gift to us. We know him through his art, and I can take comfort in that.
I guess the thing about high school is, it's the moment when you start to cross from a being a kid to being an adult, and this journey to know yourself begins. Nate's journey ended to early, and I thought I had to run away to some far-off land to start mine. But, for now, it seems to me that I have enough to explore right here. There's a whole continent to discover in myself, and I know that it's love - love for my parents, my friends, my brother, and my art - that will guide me. Love will be my map. — Lisa Ann Sandell

While friendship itself has an air of eternity about it, seeming to transcend all natural limits, there is hardly any emotion so utterly at the mercy of time. We form friendships, and grow out of them. It might almost be said that we cannot retain the faculty of friendship unless we are continually making new friends. — Robert Hugh Benson

Love isn't about saying cute things and being praised all the time. It's right after a long argument that drains the life out of both of you, and getting

over it the next day. — Auliq Ice

Be the kind of friend that you want to have.
This is what it all boils down to. Listen when they bitch. Tell them they'll be okay. Go over and check in on their cat when they're on vacation. Call them on their birthday, or better yet bake a cake in the shape of their initial. Keep their secrets. Treat them like what they are
the rare person in this world who gives a fuck about you not because they have to, but because they want to. Give a fuck about them. — Kelly Williams Brown

Life is all about the friendship and the love and the music. It sounds silly, but it is. I want to have that experience as much as I can as an adult, not as a kid doing something that people are telling her she has to do. If anyone gets in my way, I'm going to get them out of my way. — Fiona Apple

Walking through town with Trip, I thought about how easily he had folded me into his group. Sometimes when Didi makes peanut butter cookies, she'll get all cranky trying to blend the peanut butter in the sugar, eggs, and butter. See, the peanut butter always stays in a big clump and the eggs are all slimy and you have to really work at it before everything gets nice and smooth. But the way Trip pulled me into his buttery, sugary life, you'd never know when I was peanut butter in the first place. — Kat Yeh

I pretended to be interested in their secret undertaking, but in fact I was very sorry about it. Although the two siblings had involved me by choosing me as their confidant, it was still an experience that I could enter only as witness: on that path Lila would do great things by herself, I was excluded. But above all, how, after our intense conversations about love and poetry, could she walk me to the door, as she was doing, far more absorbed in the atmosphere of excitement around a shoe? ... What did I care about shoes. I still had, in my mind's eye, the most secret stages of that affair of violated trust, passion, poetry that became a book, and it was as if she and I had read a novel together, as if we had seen, there in the back of the shop and not in the parish hall on Sunday, a dramatic film. — Elena Ferrante

I think it holds up pretty good because more and more women are coming to the forefront in all areas, and back then they said that nobody would care about women's friendship. — Garry Marshall

First of all, it's friendship with God that makes possible friendship with one another in a manner that is not that we just like one another, but that were are joined by common judgments, by God, for the good of God's church. Such friendship occurs not by trying to be each other's friend, but by discovering you were engaged in common good work that is so determinative, you cannot live without one another. Now, if the church is that, it will talk about friendship in a way that avoids the superficiality of the language of relationship. Because relationships are meant to be spontaneous and short. Friendship, if it is the friendship of God, is to be characterized by fidelity in which you are even willing to tell the friend the truth. Which may mean you will risk the friendship. You need to be in that kind of community to survive the loneliness that threatens all of our souls. — Stanley Hauerwas

I'm sitting in front of the TV, watching Jerry Springer, and it makes me think of how many mad people there are in the world, and whether everyone is mad deep down, they just pretend they're not, and it's the people in asylums or on Jerry Springer who are the honest ones. I have a notebook and a chewed-up pen, and I'm trying to think of a topic for the Youth Issues speech. Mrs Thomas says she thinks I have a lot to say, but I don't. Nothing I can put words to anyway. I could talk about bullying, or alcoholism, but I don't think I could speak about that out loud, it's too real, and it'd be like I was standing up there naked. More than naked. It would be like my skin was all peeled off and I was just standing there with my heart all bloody and thumping in my rib cage for everyone to see. — Megan Jacobson

It was all about money. Dirty, bloody money. It can come and go so easily. They don't see that life is what's important. Love, friendship, trust, respect, a daily routine, someone to grow old with, siblings to cherish, family, a home; things people don't give a damn about until they lose them, things money can't bring back. — Cristiane Serruya