The Wonder Years Friendship Quotes & Sayings

Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy, or integrity. You will be hollow. — George Orwell

When David Fincher called me up a few years ago and said, 'Hey, I'd like you to score this film 'The Social Network,' I said, 'I'm flattered, but I really don't have any real experience scoring films, and I'd rather not screw it up on a high-profile project. And I like you and I don't want to compromise our friendship.' — Trent Reznor

I used to feel like this all the time and it didn't bother me, but it's different now. ( ... )
... and besides, I want to test them. I have been the third wheel in this friendship for around ten years. They have no idea who I really am. It's the exact opposite to my friendship with Flo. All these years I've passed off their lack of interest in me as an innocent vacancy, but it's now feeling more like selfishness. I don't belong here. — Dawn O'Porter

There is a frontier-line in human closeness
That love and passion cannot violate
Though in silence mouth to mouth be soldered
And passionate devotion cleave the heart.
Here friendship, too, is powerless, and years
Of that sublime and fiery happiness
When the free soul has broken clear
From the slow languor of voluptuousness.
Those striving towards it are demented, and
If the line seem close enough to broach
Stricken with sadness ... Now you understand
Why my heart does not beat beneath your touch. — Anna Akhmatova

I begin my life. I live again. I meet a young girl called Valeria. She smiles easily. She laughs tender sounds that pull at my heart. I'm too young to be profound but she makes me feel so safe. So cherished. I am thirty years old. I bump into a woman I knew when she was a girl. Valeria looks annoyed to see me. She lives in the future. Where the world is turning. I live within the past. Where the people are trapped and screaming and alone. I live within the past when Valeria and I were in love. She's waiting for the cab to come, her foot tapping against the sidewalk. Her eyes glancing at her watch every few minutes. I'm eager to reunite our lives through some kind of friendship. I'm so eager to know her again, as she was when she was a child. But Valeria lives within the future. I live within the past. Have the two ever gotten along? Have they ever even met? — F.K. Preston

Most of us sleepwalk through our lives. We take all its glories, its wine, food, love, and friendship, its sunsets and its stars, its poetry and fireplaces and laughter, for granted. We forget that experience is not, or should not be, a casual encounter, but rather an embrace. Consequently, for too many of us, when we come to the end, we wonder where the years have gone. And we suspect we have not lived. — Jack McDevitt

I think marriage is dangerous. The idea of two people trying to possess each other is wrong. I don't think the flare of love lasts. Your mind rather than your emotions must answer for the success of matrimony. It must be friendship - a calm companionship which can last through the years. — Carole Lombard

If I had one night, I'd hold you in my arms,
Find redemption, no more contention,
Keeping you close. Too long, years gone,
Wasted away. One night, our night,
Remember this. I won't forget you,
No I won't forget you. - Red-Eyed Loons — Liza M. Wiemer

After so many years drifting, not connected to anything, I'm finally tethered. Safe and loved, in the middle.
We start senior year like kings, like nothing can ever tear us apart.
We're wrong. — Abigail Haas

You the rich are no whit more attractive or capable than you who were poor and struggling a few years back. But when before you plodded lonely and unappreciated, now the glamour of the motor and the smart apartment surrounds you with a tangible glory. It is amazing how many friends look you up, call you by name, and extol you, who were once a little timid, or indifferent, or utterly neglectful in your time of dire poverty. One has true friends when one is poor and no riches can be greater than that. They are not so obvious when one is rich. — Alice Foote MacDougall

I'm 40 years old now and I have my friends from five years old up to 40, over 20 lifelong friends I have. And you can't keep that. You can't have that kind of friendship with people for 40 years from childhood friends if you're not an honorable person and if you're not a respectful person. And that's exactly what I am. — Tony Vlachos

To those who have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated, some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life. — Samuel Johnson

Clary knew she'd never be able to pull off that sort of elegance in a million years, and she didn't care. Isabelle was Isabelle, and Clary was grateful she existed, making the world a little fiercer with every one of her smiles. — Cassandra Clare

In human closeness there is a secret edge,
Nor love nor passion can pass it above,
Let lips with lips be joined in silent rage,
And hearts be burst asunder with the love.
And friendship, too, is powerless plot,
And so years of bliss with noble tends,
When your heart is free and known not,
The slow languor of the earthy sense.
And they who strive to reach this edge are mad,
But they who reached are shocked with anguish hard -
Now you know why beneath your hand
You do not feel the beating of my heart. — Anna Akhmatova

My mom and dad refused to believe that people who had grown up together in peace and friendship, had gone to the same schools, spoken the same language, and listened to the same music, could overnight be blinded by ethnic hatred and start to brutally kill one another. They simply didn't accept as true that less than two years of a multiparty system and competition for power could poison people's brains so much. — Savo Heleta

In the early days of marriage, joy precedes the act. Tragically, as the years go by joy can be severed from the act until finally, the act itself is no more. This ought not to be. Over time it is the companionship that brings joy, and service is the natural outworking of the joy of commitment. Failure to act kills it. — Ravi Zacharias

Friendship isn't measured in days, months or years, it's measured in the way someone makes you feel. — Alexa Land

The sound of his anguish spiraled up into a desert night, across a vast spread of tiny stars. Through Shahrzad's very skin. Without a word, Shahrzad took his hand and led him into the desert, far beyond the enclave of tents. When she finally turned to face him, Tariq appeared to have aged a decade in a matter of moments. They stared at each other across a small sea of glittering sand. Across years of friendship and trust, seemingly lost in an instant. — Renee Ahdieh

There are no humans left. I should not be alone. I can't help but wonder that. There were so many of us living. But time started growing young four years ago. It isn't four years anymore. It's a number I wouldn't even be able to say. It feels like four years. It's trapped in my tender memory as four years. It's been an age. Multiple ages. It's been lifetimes; every single lifetime that used to exist. I remember my mother screaming. I recall the doctors naming me as nurses wiped away her blood and covered her face with white. The end of the play. It's been so long. Why am I alone? — F.K. Preston

In my 14 years of existence, I've never had a girl write nice things about me. I want to cry, and I think of that night with my mother, at the school social and how nice she and Noah were, and how kindness punches you in the heart more than meanness ever can. It's the most powerful weapon there is. And I wonder why people don't use it more often. — Megan Jacobson

It's family, and it's faith, and it's friends, and it's not the glamour of the Presidency, or the wonder of going to receive the Nobel Prize. All those are important, of course. But maybe it's just that I'm 71 years old now. It's family, and it's faith, and it's friends. I would tell them that. Don't forget that. In your brilliance, don't turn your back on your friends. Don't think you're entitled to something, you're smarter than the next guy. — George H. W. Bush

In real life, shouldn't a wedding be an awesome party you throw with your great pal, in the presence of a bunch of your other friends? A great day, for sure, but not the beginning and certainly not the end of your friendship with a person you can't wait to talk about gardening with the for the next forty years. — Mindy Kaling

Forty years does not bear testimony to the success of a marriage; it's a testimony to friendship. Their children are also a testament to that friendship. You can raise your fist clenched tight in anger, or you can open your hand and wait for a butterfly, a ladybird, some morning dew, a zephyr, or a friend. — Christopher Rees

What would I say about "Heaven Without a Gun"? For me, to have this man, and our friendship [ with Andy Kim] grew really slowly and very consistently throughout the years before we decided to get into a studio together, I wasn't sure if he wanted to do songs that were pre-written or what. We didn't know what we were getting into. — Kevin Drew

I firmly believe, only because I've been doing this for so long, every show takes three years. 90% of them don't get three years. It just does. It takes a long time to build a community, build a friendship with your characters. It's hard for people to grasp on and make them care about you. — Kaley Cuoco

Brooks stuck his hands in his pockets and examined his shoes. It would be nice to be known fully and still loved, but what if it was one or the other? What if by the time someone got to know you, the person didn't love you anymore? And when could you be sure the person really knew you? Two years? Four? It was probably better to pull back while the going was good, rather than to risk losing a marriage on the gamble of someone's still liking the real you, the forty-years-of-marriage you. Yes, definitely better to leave good things alone. Things such as friendship.
"You look like someone ran over your dog." Blanche nudged him with her elbow. — Mary Jane Hathaway

What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736. — Jonathan Swift

Or drive up to his parents' house, one of you plugging into the car's stereo an outlandish playlist, with which you would both sing along, loudly, being extravagantly silly as adults the way you never were as children. As you got older, you realize that really, there were very few people you truly wanted to be around for more than a few days at a time, and yet here you were with someone you wanted to be around for years, even when he was at his most opaque and confusing. — Hanya Yanagihara

When one turns seventeen and begins to experience that first period of real independence, one's senses are so alert, one's sentiments so finely attuned that every conversation, every look, every laugh may be writ indelibly upon one's memory. And the friends that one happens to make in those impressionable years? One will meet them forever after with a welling of affection. — Amor Towles

I've been your friend for years with no ulterior motive," Angela reminded her, scowling.
"I don't know that," Kami said. "You could secretly harbor a fevered passion for me. You could have bodaciousasianbeauties bookmarked as one of your favorite sites. This could have been your motive for friendship all along."
Angela rolled her eyes. "I first met you when you were twelve. You were not exactly bodacious at twelve."
"I had hotential," Kami said. — Sarah Rees Brennan

If you're focused on the friendship as its own reward, serendipitous stuff just happens. I know that sounds weird, but I can tell you for our 12 years of existence, it's actually how a lot of stuff happens. — Tony Hsieh

I'm an American, first and foremost, and I'm very proud - I said, I've said, I've said to my beloved friend and colleague John McCain, a friend of 25 years, "John, I love you, but I'm not just going to vote for you on the basis of our affection or friendship." And I've said to Barack Obama, "I admire you. I'll give you all the advice I can. But I'm not going to vote for you just because you're black." We, we have to move beyond this. — Colin Powell

I've retrained myself since childhood into a kind of diligent goodwill toward life. Life and I became friends some years ago - not the sort of exciting friendship I longed for as a child, but a kindly truce, a pleasure in coming home — Elizabeth Kostova

It is for that moment when I might steady you so you don't fall, I have added my blood to an inkwell. Indelible now will be my mark on history's canvas and upon any sincere debate of God where reason finally prevails. And when you have the strength, you too may find another to hold up. They lean against each other in a storm, those cypresses grown tall together ... through the years. If they had not trusted and protected one another the way they do, they would not have survived and given us their grace and shade - a place for our eyes to meet. Our friendship can be like this: a needed lift, a sail, a pillar, a springboard to taste the unfathomable. It is to tend you as you come into being, like a new world, that causes me to stay, gives me a purpose. Of course I thank you for that ... for letting me help. — Rumi

The length of the friendship never brought astonishment. After all, the
majority of Baby Boomers could likely claim a long-standing friendship in their lives. No, it was always the letters: the-pen-on-paper, inside a-stamped-envelope, mailed-in-a-mailbox letter that was awe inspiring.
"You've been writing a letter every week for almost thirty years?"
The question always evokes disbelief, particularly since the dawn of the
Internet and email. We quickly correct the misconception.
"Well, at least one letter, but usually more. We write each other three or four letters a week. And we never wait for a return letter before beginning another."
Conservatively speaking, at just three letters a week since 1987, that
would equal 4,368 letters each, but we'd both agree that estimate is much
too low. We have, on occasion, written each other two letters in a single
day. — Mary Potter Kenyon

Talleyrand said that two things are essential in life: to give good dinners and to keep on fair terms with women. As the years pass and fires cool, it can become unimportant to stay always on fair terms either with women or one's fellows, but a wide and sensitive appreciation of fine flavours can still abide with us, to warm our hearts. — M.F.K. Fisher

Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon under its shade.
For such is life. We grow rich as we plant through the early years, but then come the years when time undoes our work and cuts down our trees. One by one our comrades deprive us of their shade, and within our mourning we always feel now the secret grief of growing old.
If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me. You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you forever by ordeals endured together. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

These are universals, as is the fear women feel during times of political upheaval that occur in what could still be called the outside world of men--whether during the Taiping Rebellion so many years ago or today for women in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sudan, or even right here in this country in the post-9/11 era. On the surface, we as American women are independent, free, and mobile, but at our cores we still long for love, friendship, happiness, tranquility, and to be heard. — Lisa See