
Hiking Is an Ideal Structure for Friendship
“Without this hike … it would have been one of those college friendships where you get together and talk about the old days.”
“Without this hike … it would have been one of those college friendships where you get together and talk about the old days.”
“If the house was burning down, she would run in and carry me out. She shows up, boy does she show up.”
“He could tell if it rang true inside of him or not.”
“I’ve realized that you have to look for friendship in places you would never expect it.”
“Baby and I would talk about growing old together.”
“We have a flag that we fly. We have a portable flagpole.”
“I get a glimmer as to what she’s feeling right then, and it also gives me a way to share how I’m feeling with her.”
“It is unlikely to think that someone who was trained by Strom Thurmond would end up being like brothers with me, my father being a civil-rights activist.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day. I’m not in the place that I need to be, to be positive for the kids. Give me a boost; I need a laugh.”
“When he walked in and sat next to me, it was really weird. Like, Can you talk in my ear very closely so I can make sure it’s you?”
“Something that totally changes your life like that, even if it’s overwhelmingly good, it still is overwhelming.”
“As a queer woman in the military, seeing both Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the combat-exclusion policy repealed [during my career] was momentous.”
“My kids know they’re a product of me and their dad, but that Debbie was our oven … They love her even more knowing the sacrifice she made.”
“A lot of people told me, ‘Don’t do it.’ I said, ‘But I love books and reading.’”
“I used to joke and say, ‘If I died in my apartment, I knew that Barbara was the person who would find me.’”
“With friendship, there is this expectation that it’s supposed to be easy, which … is not an honest assessment of what any long-term, intimate bond looks like.”
“If you cross an ocean, you’re constantly together, and you just become a family.”
“When they were babies, we raised them together. We were always at each other’s houses, and the girls were always together.”
“I think it’s important that you remember who your friend is, that they are not just a set of political policies.”
“It was an all-day game. I was thinking about it almost an obsessive amount.”
“There’s nothing nicer than opening the mailbox and seeing something friendly, something that’s not a bill.”
“We don’t have this superficial friendship where I’m only best friends with you when things are funny and happy … I’m also here for all the transitions and all the rough patches.”
“It’s a distraction from all that’s going on … This is a way to come together, in a different way—teaching instead of just talking.”
“At first, I was indiscriminately adding other Paul O’Sullivans on Facebook. It was like a joke. Then I realized, ‘Hey, wait a minute, we’re all musicians.’”
“I’ll complain to her about how I couldn’t find a parking spot at the Nordstrom sale, while she’s complaining to me about how her goats have hoof rot.”
“I was always in a fishbowl. I felt like I was not just Alex, but Alex the RA.”
“Maybe there should’ve been some animosity, but we’re both naturally not drawn to unnecessary conflict.”
“People were in the right place at the right time. That’s its own small Christmas miracle, I guess.”
“Looking around our culture, I think a lot of people are starting to experience the limits of individualism.”
“Technology nowadays allows people to have music that’s personalized to them … but it also allows people to collaborate in ways that we weren’t able to before.”
“It allows me to do my science better when I feel like I have a community.”
“People become frightened at the end of life. Sometimes I see them moving away from friends as they get sicker.”
“It can be hard to be really close to someone who’s trying to do the same thing that you do.”
“To know that there were people in my school doing things that I had dreamed about doing was really crazy to me.”
“We were strong for each other. I don’t think I could have been as clever or as grounded had it been just me by myself.”
“These idols I’ve had, they were just like real human beings, not some distant star that wouldn’t even talk to you.”
“Spaceflight makes you try to be a little bit more understanding, a little bit nicer, and try to see other points of view. Because all of humanity is right down there and you’re looking at it.”
“Our motto is: ‘Follow soccer, see the world.’”
“To be known completely and to be loved is a very profound experience. Adult males do not often have that kind of an experience.”
“You see a lot of cliques in the cosplay community ... But what’s been nice about our friendship is that there’s never any competition.”
“I think our society wants older women to sit down, shut up, and go knit somewhere in a corner. And that’s not what we’re doing.”
“The house was a magnet for all kinds of people to come and be with us, because it was such a special place.”
“The only competition in Masonry is to see who can be the better person.”
“Fans are often prone to saying, ‘This band saved my life.’ BTS made us realize we have to save ourselves.”
“What we do—nobody really understands it. I have a lot of friends who don’t work in this space, and they think I’m just having two-hour lunches all day.”
“If I’m onstage with people I’ve been performing with for 20-some years … I never get left hanging.”
“I have a strong sense of public engagement as something that is our moral duty, our social duty, but also is really fun.”
“From the moment I thought Scott might need a kidney, it was just a given to me that I was giving him mine.”
“It’s an excuse for us to constantly keep in touch and not drift away.”
“It’s a backwards kind of friendship. You get in with the most vulnerable parts of your heart first.”
“Any little decision, I always have to consult them. There’s never a moment where I’m not considering, What would Jess and Sha tell me to do?”
“Out of that short experience came this wonderful, beautiful relationship. I just love Alan.”
“Everyone in the office was like, ‘Are you the new Courtney? She was amazing.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, I have such big shoes to fill.’”
“In the early days, it was so hard to describe us. People were like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
“She got me to look at things in the future instead of just the present. Kelli had planned so much for herself that I think it started to rub off.”
“It did come as a shock when she told me that she was leaving. It was like, Well, we’ve only barely begun.”
“People didn’t really understand what it was like to grow up the way we grew up. It was so great not to have to explain that to Ariane.”
"Going to Nuevo Laredo for lunch or dinner was no big deal. We would do that all the time, without even really realizing we were crossing a border."
“The rule was you should never go over the heads of the kids. Anything that appealed to adults had to appeal to the kids too.”
“To be able to talk about things that only we as young women clergy experience is really comforting.”