"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
— Mark Twain

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
— Ernest Hemingway

"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 not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
— Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey)

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."
— Charles W. Eliot

"Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends."
— George Bernard Shaw

"The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down."
— Oprah Winfrey

"It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"This book taught me, once and for all, how easily you can escape this world with the help of words! You can find friends between the pages of a book, wonderful friends."
— Cornelia Funke (Inkspell)

"When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed."
— Fred Rogers

"A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met."
— Jim Henson (Favorite Songs From Jim Henson's Muppets)

"A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away."
— George Eliot

"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."
— E.B. White (Charlotte's Web)

"Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or you'll run out of dope or liquor and realize that it was all you ever had in common."
— David Sedaris (Naked)

"Friends are God's way of apologizing for your family."
— Wayne W. Dyer (The Power of Intention)

"A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down."
— Arnold H. Glasow

"I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft..."
— Jim Morrison

"When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy--that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them."
— Mark Twain

"Friends are those who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer."
— Ed Cunningham

"Have your Grandchildren first!"
— Stephen King, Tony Hillerman, Brian Keene, Stephen Bowman, Aimee & David Thurlo

"A friend cannot be owned
That is plain to see
Friendships must be shared,
Just like our friend, Ruby"
— Stephen Cosgrove (Rhubarb)

"Yet Byron never made tea as you do, who fill the pot so that when you put the lid on the tea spills over. There is a brown pool on the table--it is running among your books and papers. Now you mop it up, clumsily, with your pocket-hankerchief. You then stuff your hankerchief back into your pocket--that is not Byron; that is so essentially you that if I think of you in twenty years' time, when we are both famous, gouty and intolerable, it will be by that scene: and if you are dead, I shall weep."
— Virginia Woolf (The Waves)

""Why are you crying?" shivered the otter. "Because I am cold!" shouted the gnome. "Then why are you shouting?" chattered the otter. "Because," yelled the gnome, "when I shout it gets part of the cold from the inside out.""
— Stephen Cosgrove (Gnome from Nome)

"I don't know what to do or where to go; All I know is that I have support."
— Tammy Huang

"What are friends for, if not to help bear our sins?"
— Nella Larsen (The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and The Stories)

"I told Mama and Savannah about Ruben's proposal. That got us to talking about marriage and we laughed and cried some, and missed Papa, and it felt good to belong to each other. I don't feel as lonely today as I have in months. At least I know there are other women around me. "
— Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 : A Novel)