Friendship Quotes

As I look back over the other best friendships I've had that also ended, I wonder if, in addition to simply having a finite amount of time for such intimacy, we also have certain periods in our lives in which we seek out people who seem to embody the things we lack. Then, when we gain those things for ourselves, we no longer need that friend in the same way, which causes a serious dissonance in the relationship. Perhaps this is why these particular friendships burn so bright and then disappear so completely.

~ Megan Crane

Severing our young and fragile friendship was a sad ordeal, but sadder still was the fact that this friend found it so difficult to respond to my immediate need, unlike a dreamed boy who always afforded me easy comfort. I couldn’t understand what was so hard about reaching out to hug someone. But judging by Gregory’s uncomfortable conduct I had to assume it was an honest trial.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

There is such a thing as crazy-mother bonding. . . . It happens when one realizes the other also has had a crazy mother, and it is both painful and pleasurable. There are more crazy mothers than you might think.

~ Minrose Gwin

He was able to love them again, but he loved them now in a wiser way, knowing their weakness.

~ William Steig

Lena realized that a fundamental layer of their happiness depended on the four of them being close to one another. Their lives were independent and full. Their friendship was only one aspect of their lives, but it seemed to give meaning to all the others.

~ Ann Brashares

I'm scared, all right? I said. I could feel my stomach churn as my gaze rested on the wooden trunk.Nathan turned my chin, looking at me with an expression of utter sincerity. You don't have to be. I'm here.

~ Markelle Grabo

I learned a lot that night—like how incredibly mind blowing ho-hos and wine coolers were together, how that you could discover the answers to life’s most difficult questions by watching Buffy, but most of all, that no matter what was going on in life—a best friend could make it all seem bearable.

~ Peggy Martinez

It's one thing to have a divinely inspired love given to you to experience and share; it's something else altogether to recognize it when it appears. Our job is to go on being humbled and grateful that we should get to experience such a thing in our lifetimes, and preserve its magic by doing the most responsible thing possible to keep it alive . . . Just keep saying yes.

~ Mark Fiore

And there it is: Even though we’re standing in the same patch of sun-drenched pavement, we might as well be a hundred thousand miles apart.

~ Lauren Oliver

Before a Cat will condescendTo treat you as a trusted friend,Some little token of esteemIs needed, like a dish of cream;And you might now and then supplySome caviare, or Strassburg Pie,Some potted grouse, or salmon paste —He's sure to have his personal taste.(I know a Cat, who makes a habitOf eating nothing else but rabbit,And when he's finished, licks his pawsSo's not to waste the onion sauce.)A Cat's entitled to expectThese evidences of respect.And so in time you reach your aim,And finally call him by his name.

~ T.s. Eliot

Alain Badiou was once seated amongst the public in a room where I was delivering a talk, when his cellphone (which, to add insult to injury, was mine -- I had lent it to him) all of a sudden started to ring. Instead of turning it off, he gently interrupted me and asked me if I could talk more softly, so that he could hear his interlocutor more clearly . . . If this was not an act of true friendship, I do not know what friendship is. So, this book is dedicated to Alain Badiou.

~ Slavoj Žižek

Sharing secrets is the way in which women tie themselves together, for it reveals complicity and trust. Holding secrets shows trustworthiness and a sort of quite defiance. It is a natural thing for a female to hold secrets within her breast until the time is ripe to release them. Does it not follow the way in which her body is formed? A woman is made with that dark and mysterious recess that can grow a child safely until the child is ready to come out onto the birthing bed. And like birthing, secrets present themselves in many ways. some slip easily into the world, others must be torn out, if the body is unwilling.

~ Kathleen Kent

There are people one knows and people one doesn't. One shouldn't cheapen the former by feigning intimacy with the latter.

~ Tony Horwitz

You are in a melancholy humour, and fancy that any one unlike yourself must be happy. But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience — or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.

~ Jane Austen

Scully,' [Mulder] said, his voice quiet and serious, 'with the... unorthodox explanations I often find when studying the evidence, I know you're always skeptical-but every time you're at least fair to me. You respect my opinion, even when you don't agree with it.' He looked at his hands. 'I don't know if I've ever told you, but I really appreciate that.'She looked at him and smiled. 'You've told me, Mulder. Maybe not in words... but you've told me.

~ Kevin J. Anderson

It occurs to me that she is not unique--that all women compare lives. We are aware of whose husband works more, who helps more around the house, who makes more money, who is having more sex. We compare our children, taking note of who is sleeping through the night, eating their vegetables, minding their manners, getting into the right schools. We know who keeps the best house, throws the best parties, cooks the best meals, has the best tennis game. We know who among us is the smartest, has the fewest lines around her eyes, has the best figure--whether naturally or artificially. We are aware of who works full-time, who stays at home with the kids, who manages to do it all and make it look easy, who shops and lunches while the nanny does it all. We digest it all and then discuss with our friends. Comparing and then confiding; it is what women do.The difference, I think, lies in why we do it. Are we doing it to gauge our own life and reassure ourselves that we fall within the realm of normal? Or are we being competitive, relishing others' shortcomings so that we can win, if only by default?

~ Emily Giffin

Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to him in his quiet hour, noiselessly climbing the winding stair to take him by surprise, and then with talk and music we should have held heavenly festival throughout the night!

~ Hermann Hesse

Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will.' Her lips touched his cheek. 'I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry.

~ David Nicholls

There was just Mavis and me, but it never seemed lonely because we never stopped talking. I could have an argument, in earnest, about who was the best “Kid” in the Hall, without having to explain who they were. One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about. We never needed best friend gear because I guess with real friends you don’t have to make it official. It just is.

~ Mindy Kaling

Somehow he'd become the one constant in this whole uneven chapter in her life, & the idea that could change was unsettling.

~ Jennifer E. Smith

(Response to King Erik XIV of Sweden's proposal of marriage:)[W]hile we perceive ... the zeal and love of your mind towards us is not diminished, yet in part we are grieved that we cannot gratify your Serene Highness with the same kind of affection. And that indeed does not happen because we doubt in any way of your love and honour, but, as often we have testified both in words and writing, that we have never yet conceived a feeling of that kind of affection towards anyone.We therefore beg your Serene Highness again and again that you be pleased to set a limit to your love, that it advance not beyond the laws of friendship for the present nor disregard them in the future. ... We certainly think that if God ever direct our hearts to consideration of marriage we shall never accept or choose any absent husband how powerful and wealthy a Prince soever. But that we are not to give you an answer until we have seen your person is so far from the thing itself that we never even considered such a thing. I have always given both to your brother ... and also to your ambassador likewise the same answer with scarcely any variation of the words, that we do not conceive in our heart to take a husband but highly commend this single life, and hope that your Serene Highness will no longer spend time in waiting for us.

~ Elizabeth I

Maybe being married is talking to oneself with one's other self listening.

~ Ruth Rendell

A single person is a manageable entity, whom you can either make friends with or leave alone. But half of a married couple is not exactly a whole human being: if the marriage is successful it is something a little more than that; if unsuccessful, a little less. In either case, a fresh complication is added to the already intricate business of friendship: as Clem had once remarked, you might as well try to dance a tarantella with a Siamese twin.

~ Jan Struther

Friendship exhibits a glorious nearness by resemblance to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying Holy, Holy, Holy to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.

~ C.s. Lewis

I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.

~ Stendhal

The difference between a friend and an enemy is friendliness.

~ Frank Delaney

The young Centurion, who had been completely still throughout, said very softly, as though to himself, Greater love hath no man-- and Justin thought it sounded as though he were quoting someone else.

~ Rosemary Sutcliff

Jess thought for a moment. 'You know those films where people fight up the top of the Empire State Building or up a mountain or whatever? And there's always that bit when the baddie slips off and the hero tries to save him, but, like, the sleeve of this jacket tears off and goes over and you hear him all the way down. Aaaaaaaaagh. That's what I want to do.' 'You want to watch me plunge to my doom.' 'I'd like to know that I've made the effort. I want to show people the torn sleeve.

~ Nick Hornby

Do you not know how bashful friendship is? Friends - comrades - do not look at each other. Friendship would be ashamed...

~ C.s. Lewis

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

Counting on each other became automatic. When I found a sweater in Texas I wanted, I learned to buy two, which was easier than seeing the look of disappointment on Caroline's face when I returned home with only one. When she went out from the boathouse on a windy day, she gave me her schedule in advance, which assuaged her worst-case scenario of flipping the boat, being hit on the head by an oar, and leaving Lucille stranded at home. I still have my set of keys to her house, to locks and doors that no longer exist, and I keep them in my glove compartment, where they have been moved from one car to another in the past couple of years. Someday I will throw them in the Charles, where I lost the seat to her boat and so much else.

~ Gail Caldwell

The King once said to me, 'Harold, you stand above all other men.' I said, 'No, Sire. I want nothing more than to stand shoulder to shoulder with my men. I am nothing without them.

~ Elizabeth Alder

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals, love an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.

~ Oliver Goldsmith

Since the moment I saw her yesterday, I've been looking through the sparkly prism of exhilaration that comes with any old flame. But now, for the first time, I'm not just seeing what I want. I'm seeing what my friend needs.

~ Brad Meltzer

Ivy! It's a natural disaster! You have to be there!

~ Annie Barrows

I expect it will turn out that sexual intercourse is possible between Gethenian double-sexed and Hainish-norm one-sexed human beings, though such intercourse will inevitably be sterile. It remains to be proved; Estraven and I proved nothing except perhaps a rather subtler point.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Talking with Elaine like that, with no judgment from her or anything, seemed to bring my feelings more to the surface so I could look at them. I love times like that; you don't get many of them.(Walker, in STOTAN!)

~ Chris Crutcher

Why had we let it go? Why had we both been condemned...to an exile among dreary strangers who had made us give up all desire for rest, for friendship, for the sound of human voices? Could I now reclaim a single hour spent talking to my brother, Philip, and give it to Ken Daggart? Who made it our duty to accept, as the only reward for our work, the gray torture of pretending love for those who roused nothing but contempt?

~ Ayn Rand

Bondage And Service - that was what they all demanded and from everyone. This craving to find themselves in another, to subjugate and appropriate foreign territory, to create a new field for their own will in a second body, foreign flesh for their own soul; this greedy, consuming hunger devoured every other desire, and they called it friendship!

~ Hermann Bahr

No, Geo—underneath all that, Nan really loves me. It’s just she wants me to see things her way. You know, she’s two years older; that meant a lot when we were children. I’ve always thought of her as being sort of like a road—I mean, she leads somewhere. With her, I’ll never lose my way.

~ Christopher Isherwood