“He was easy to talk to, and easy not to talk to-equally important qualities in a friend. Essential in a travel companion.”— Phil Knight
“For that is what you are, that is who you are – you are an author. You cannot cease to write any more than you can cease to breathe…This difficult season will pass – your eyes and mind will inevitably be opened once more to the wealth of ideas all around you…And even if the ideas around you fall short of what you seek – even if, as you say, you have not the heart to write… perhaps it is your heart you ought to write of. – Laurie to Jo, on writing”— Trix Wilkins
“I’m not sure why that story came back to me while I sat huddled in Sydney’s car on the way to the lake. It happened so long ago. I guess maybe it was because it gave me the assurance that when things got bad, there were certain people you could always count on.”— D.J. MacHale
“How’re you holding up?” He slid down the wall next to me and handed me a beer.”I’ve had better days.” I took a long, satisfying drink and stared at the wall in front of me.”Yeah,” was his simple reply. “My dad is downstairs. He said this wake sucks.” I could hear that he was smiling.I took another swig. “Well, I didn’t plan this shindig, but the next funeral I host, I’ll make sure it’s a rager.”— J.B. Hartnett
“Tip and Lulu shared a smile… and what can we say? Best friends were made that day. Marafiki milele was what they would stay. Their laughter could be heard for miles around. It truly was a wonderful sound.”— Lauren Isabelle Pierre
“Ah, two firm friends, reunited at last! There should be sweet violin music playing for us, but I’ll settle for the screams of the dying.”— Jonathan Stroud
“Perhaps the ache of homesickness was a fair price to pay for having so many good people in her life.”— Becky Chambers
“I love you, Gretchen Lang. You are my reflection and my shadow and I will not let you go. We are bound together forever and ever! Until Halley’s Comet comes around again. I love you dearly and I love you queerly and no demon is bigger than this!”— Grady Hendrix
“Evan always used to day that it wasn’t that you couldn’t see that you should be afraid of, but what was right in front of you, in plain sight.”— Kathleen Glasgow
“…I’m in a little bubble of warmth, just like I had with Ellis, a place I never thought I’d be again.”— Kathleen Glasgow
“I must love and be loved. I must feel that my dear and chosen friends are happier through me. When I have wandered out of myself in my endeavour to shed pleasure around, I must again return laden with the gathered sweets on which I feed and live. Permit this to be, unblamed—permit a heart whose sufferings have been, and are, so many and so bitter, to reap what joy it can from the necessity it feels to be sympathized with—to love.”— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
“Of course we’re friends … we are both civilized men, aren’t we? We’ve shared bed and board and bottle. We’ll always be friends, and the dog collar I have on you will always be ignored by mutual consent, and I’ll take good and benevolent care of you. All I ask in return is your soul. Small item. We can even ignore the fact that you’ve handed it over, the way we ignore the dog collar.”— Stephen King
“I pressed my hand against her hair, holding her to me, filled with the certainty that she was going to hurt me again and that I didn’t have the strength to push her away before she did.”— Maggie Stiefvater
“Reading is, with friendship, one of the surest contributions to the work of grieving. It helps us, more generally, to grieve for the limitations of our life, the limitations of the human condition.”— Didier Anzieu
“Friends might share clothes and chocolate, but they must share books. Just like you share the same stars, share the same books and you’ll never be apart.”— Toni Sorenson
“If you’re truly friends, then you don’t just offer a little whisp of your love. You unzip your chest, reach in and pull your heart out and says, “It’s all yours—please keep it beating.”— Toni Sorenson
“One of the few advantages of reaching my age is that I’ve seen it all. Learned not to judge anyone until I’ve walked in their shoes. That’s why we all need friends, isn’t it, to help us out with the weak spots? And sometimes the weak spots nobody can see are the ones that hurt the most.”— Debbie Johnson
“Why have you been my friend when I didn’t deserve friendship?” “Because friendship isn’t something anyone deserves…it’s just one of those blessings of life, you can’t earn…love has no price tag.”— Toni Sorenson
“Want to be a good friend? Here’s what a friend does well: they listen, they stand by you, they tell you the brutal truth, they cause your tears from time to time, but then help you wipe them dry, they laugh with you…a lot, they don’t bring up your bad memories, they try to love the people you love, they go places with you at the most inconvenient times, they laugh some more, they create experiences and a string of memories held together by love, mostly that’s what they do…they love you even when you don’t love you.”— Toni Sorenson
“You cannot be a friend to someone else, if you do not have a friendship with yourself.”— Toni Sorenson
“A true friend will never stand in your allotted beam of light. They will get out of the way so you can grow, but they’ll stay nearby in case you need what they can offer.”— Toni Sorenson
“Go and have another look at the roses. And you will understand that yours is indeed unique in all the world.”— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry