brothers & sisters ii

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate now knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
-- Henri Nouwen

  

 

We are keenly aware of the faults of our friends, but if they like us enough it doesn't matter.

-- Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook

True friendship consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth and value. 

-- Ben Jonson

 

There is nothing we like to see so much as the gleam of pleasure in a person's eye when he feels that we have sympathized with him, understood him. At these moments something fine and spiritual passes between two friends. These are the moments worth living.

-- Don Marquis

 

  

Yes we are [friends] and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter.  I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front.  We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often.  I don't want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and doesn't bother to check her diary when we arrange to meet. 

-- Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body