Binding Friendship Quotes

Only by binding together as a single force will we remain strong and unconquerable.

Love binds people too, in matrimony's sacred bonds where chaste lovers are met, and friends cement their trust and friendship. How happy is mankind, if the love that orders the stars above rules, too, in your hearts.

My dad once said... "Some friends are like "rubber wrappers"; they bind with you safely but get weaker when you stretch them too much". Treat your friends with care, else the elasticity of their love for you may not go lasting!

There is much we can learn from a friend who happens to be a horse.

I think the strangest thing that exists, is how there are seven billion people on the planet and yet, so many people can spend their whole lives looking for somebody to love and never, ever find that. There are so many things that we can find in other people— friendship, learning processes, enrichment— so many things, nevertheless, the most elusive and fragile of all the things we can possibly find in another human being, is love. To be the one that someone loves and for that person to be the one that you love. Why is this difficult to find? My answer is that, because out of the seven billion, there really is only one. You don’t find something and make it work; you find the one and when you do, you work until it works. The problem is finding the one. Many, many people are born and die never finding that.

Love is ageless and colorless. It is a spiritual force that binds two hearts and two souls together as one.

In friendship I shall bind my heart and soul to yours. Forever beside you I shall stand. Together or apart always will I be with you. Eternal friends we shall ever be.

Wesley's touch lingers on my skin. His music echoes through my head. I remind myself as I scrub my skin that we are both liars and con artists. That we will always have secrets, some that bind us and some that cut between us, slicing us into pieces.

There are some things success is not. It's not fame. It's not money or power. Success is waking up in the morning so excited about what you have to do that you literally fly out the door. It's getting to work with people you love. Success is connecting with the world and making people feel. It's finding a way to bind together who have nothing in common but a dream. It's falling asleep at night knowing you did the best job you could. Success is joy and freedom and friendship. And success is love.

After truly knowing Ryke, I can't fathom shutting the door on a sibling. It's a bind that's different than a friendship. It's one that hurts more if it breaks, but when it's whole, it means everything

Affection expressed physically made friendship so complete and binding.

I keep walking. I feel daring, light-headed. They are not my best friends or even my friends. Nothing binds me to them. I am free.

Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't binding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she'd had this kind, she didn't want the other.

A series of books, dilapidated and faded, sit bundled together. Most of the bindings are separating from the yellowed pages, but each is at home in its battered state. Their wrinkled pages and discolored skin tell not of old age, but of a good life. These books, unlike so many others, were not just read, but revisited, loved, and experienced.

I should like to have friends, I confess. I do not suppose I ever shall. But there have been moments when I have realized what friendship might be. Rare moments - but never forgotten. Friendship is a binding, as solemn as marriage. We take each other for life, through everything - forever. But it’s not enough to say we will do it. I think, myself, it is pride which makes friendship most difficult. To submit, to bow down to the other is not easy, but it must be done if one is to really understand the being of the other. Friendship isn’t merging. One doesn’t thereupon become a shadow and one remain a substance. Yet, it is terribly solemn - frightening, even.

That's the thing about knowing someone your entire life. You have a common history; it binds, provides a depth that new friendships, new loves, can never create. It lets two folks be in the room together without having to explain their silences. Or their passions.

Friendship is just a made up word that we think means: I know you and trust you more than the average person I know. It really means: somewhere in the creation of our destinies we were meant to be the missing piece of each other with a bind unequaled to anything else in the world. We were meant to stay together no matter the physical distance. As long as we can both look up at the night sky and see the same moon we'll always have each other in sight.

tis better to have a dispute with honourable people than to have a victory over dishonourable ones. You cannot treat with the ruined, for they have no hostages for rectitude. With them there is no true friendship, and their agreements are not binding, however stringent they may appear, because they have no feeling of honour. Never have to do with such men, for if honour does not restrain a man, virtue will not, since honour is the throne of rectitude. cxvii

Forgiveness is that subtle thread that binds both love and friendship. Without forgiveness, you may not even have a child one day.

After a while, when he finished telling his stories, they broke bread to bind their friendship and shared salt as a promise of his tribe’s protection.

Friendship needs something to bind us together, a shared focus and destination. We can help each other on a journey only if we are going the same direction.

I lost my voice and my best friend too On swift, fierce winds and wings of blue, The cold rain fell where beams had shone, So I wrapped up tight and safe. Alone. But I missed my friend, I missed my voice, And my heart still whispered of another choice To break out of my binding, safe, and warm, And see what the world looked like after the storm. So I struggled free and was greeted by Colorful brushstrokes across the sky, The melody of the summer breeze And blue wings like mine in hazel trees. On the soft, sweet air of the mountain glade, We gathered together in cool, green shade, And told our stories, beginnings to ends, And found our song in the hearts of new friends.

In 1939, unemployment was over 17 percent. Just outside of Boston at 210 Lincoln Street, there were over three hundred shoe companies. Some of them decided to pass the hat to help those who didn’t have enough to eat. So the 210 Foundation was born, and it still exists today. “Shoe People Helping Shoe People.” It is the only industry organization of its kind. It binds those in the industry with a certain respect and a desire to help those who fall on hard times. We used to call it the “Old Shoe Biz.” That meant lasting friendships, drinking, good restaurants,

So on those happy days of yore Oft as I dare to dwell once more, Still must I miss the friends so tried, Whom Death has severed from my side. But ever when true friendship binds, Spirit it is that spirit finds; In spirit then our bliss we found, In spirit yet to them I’m bound. —Uhland

And though upper-class status doesn’t always entail having money, it does entail some social proximity to money. Real poverty, it has been observed, is about social isolation as much as it is about material deprivation; the poor don’t have the sort of friendship networks that the advantaged draw upon.29 That’s why we may balk at calling a penniless graduate student “poor.” Class is one way that you benefit from the money in the pockets of friends and acquaintances.

Soren! Neither of you are children anymore! This friendship must end. I won't have you angering our Gods by consorting with the likes of her.

I realized that liking or not liking someone was irrelevant. It was the time in history that you shared. A time binds you to another person just as passions tie to you to the dead.

...having read even a few dozen books in common is a force more binding than blood.

He looked at all the people in that room, their tears and their smiles merging together as one, and at the care they all had for him, as if he was worth something great.

Thank you for always being there for me. You're the best friends I've ever had.

Friendship, and love…” he began, “… are unifying emotions. They bind you to others in such a way that they are no longer ‘other’; they are a part of your ‘self’. If you hurt a friend, you hurt yourself.

Pain is a funny thing. We fight so hard to avoid it, almost more than death. But it’s the only thing that binds us. Going through pain together and coming out on the other side is the only form of friendship I’ve ever known.

Your love for your friend should be grounded in Me, and for My sake you should love whoever seems to be good and is very dear to you in this life. Without Me friendship has no strength and cannot endure. Love which I do not bind is neither true nor pure.

That, Bonecaster, is what we mortals delight in doing. You bind yourself to a clan, to a tribe, to a nation or an empire, but to give force to the illusion of a common bond, you must feed its opposite – that all those not of your clan, or tribe, or empire, do not share that bond. I have seen Onrack the Broken, a T'lan Imass. And now I have seen him, mortal once again. To the joy and the life in the eyes of my friend, I will fight all those who deem him their enemy. For the bond between us is one of friendship, and that, Til'aras Benok, is not an illusion.

Wouldn’t that be a tidy ending to the story? Nice and neat, all smoothed over. The abuser gets pushed out the window, saved by female friendship and camaraderie and the indelible bonds that men like to think bind women together. They never see the places where those bonds fray; they don’t care enough to look.

There is no universally valid idea from which man has not woven a rope to bind his own feet, and if possible, the feet of others as well, so that the free product of his creativity becomes a punitive power over him; no true, genuine relationship between people which they have not turned into mutual enslavement. Love, friendship, tribal loyalty, and finally even love of freedom have served as inexhaustible sources of moral oppression and servitude.... Humans are eternally on their knees before one or the other - the golden calf or duty imposed from outside.... It doesn't enter their heads that there is also something within them worthy of respect.

Somewhere in this world, the tides are rising high and washing away the negative tides of curses that bind my life. Somewhere the sun is sprinkling some glitter on the ocean’s surface, and in the same place, a bird’s feather is gently floating in the wind. Those thoughts alone give me faith because I know somewhere in the world what I imagine is happening precisely in that order. Therefore, I know that hope and faith do exist, and the impossible is possible.

Chorus for a Cat I will never subject be, I am free. Try to curb me and, no doubt, You'll find out Just exactly what a claw Is for! Or I'll dematerialize Before your eyes: Ere you lay a finger on Me, I'm gone! You may think I'm in the lane; Think again! You may guess I'm on the roof; Any proof? I am not to hold or bind, Or find. I will hunt and sing and fight In the night. All day long I lie and doze, Comatose: Never answer when you call And bawl. If to order me you choose, You will lose. Try to understand my mind And you'll find Truest friendship I will give While I live; Kindly amiability, And sympathy. If subservience you prefer, Buy a cur!

These reflections prompt the question: is it better to be loved rather than feared, or vice versa? The answer is that one would prefer to be both but, since they don’t go together easily, if you have to choose, it’s much safer to be feared than loved. We can say this of most people: that they are ungrateful and unreliable; they lie, they fake, they’re greedy for cash and they melt away in the face of danger. So long as you’re generous and, as I said before, not in immediate danger, they’re all on your side: they’d shed their blood for you, they’d give you their belongings, their lives, their children. But when you need them they turn their backs on you. The ruler who has relied entirely on their promises and taken no other precautions is lost. Friendship that comes at a price, and not because people admire your spirit and achievements, may indeed have been paid for, but that doesn’t mean you really possess it and you certainly won’t be able to count on it when you need it. Men are less worried about letting down someone who has made himself loved than someone who makes himself feared. Love binds when someone recognizes he should be grateful to you, but, since men are a sad lot, gratitude is forgotten the moment it’s inconvenient. Fear means fear of punishment, and that’s something people never forget.

THE GOLDEN CHAIN OF FRIENDSHIP Friendship is a golden chain, the links are friends so dear, And like a rare and precious jewel, it’s treasured more each year. It’s clasped together firmly with a love that’s deep and true, And it’s rich with happy memories and fond recollections, too. Time can’t destroy its beauty, for as long as memory lives, Years can’t erase the pleasure that the joy of friendship gives. For friendship is a priceless gift that can’t be bought or sold, And to have an understanding friend is worth far more than gold. And the golden chain of friendship is a strong and blessed tie Binding kindred hearts together as the years go passing by.

Seren Pedac's attention remained on the approaching Tiste Edur. A hunter. A killer. One who probably also possessed the trait of long silences. She could imagine this Binadas, sharing a fire in the wilderness with Hull Beddict. In the course of an evening, a night and the following morning, perhaps a half-dozen words exchanged between them. And, she suspected, the forging of a vast, depthless friendship. These were the mysteries of men, so baffling to women. Where silences could become a conjoining of paths. Where a handful of inconsequential words could bind spirits in an ineffable understanding. Forces at play that she could sense, indeed witness, yet ever remaining outside them. Baffled and frustrated and half disbelieving.

friendship is like a stapler,when it is used to bind to pages the pages are bound tightly but when the stapler is used to remove the pin the pages are left torn forever

So often people isolate themselves when they are lonely, hurt or afraid. Yet the Lord says that He wants to put them into families—families of friends, families within the Body of Christ, families of their own. The isolation to which many have retreated is due to broken relationships that need to be bound together. Other times, there are relationships that do not yet exist that need to be bound together; however, assisting or inviting people into small group fellowships or prayer groups sets an atmosphere where the healing of prayerful partnership and friendship will eventuate in faith that binds together.

If through the course of a great and lengthy friendship, harsh words are expressed, the one that truly loses is the one that cannot forgive! They are bound by pride tighter than any chain could bind.

You can't stop satan from doing his job; his job is to steal, kill and destroy but don't let him stop you from doing your own job; and your job is to bind and lose his stronghold. His job is to destroy you and your job is to destroy him too. Cast him out.

You don't wait till your case become terminal before you ask for a doctor. If you wait till it becomes incurable you will die without knowing your right. Spiritually put; you don't wait until you have problem before you pray. Pray without ceasing for you do not know when the problem will come. If you can bind headache you can bind cancer. If you can bind fever, you can equally bind ulcer. If you can loss a mentally dreaded man, you can loss and raise the dead.

When I meet people in different parts of the world, I am always reminded that we are all basically alike. We are all human beings. Maybe we have different clothes, our skin is of a different color or we speak different languages. That is on the surface. But basically, we are the same human beings. That is what binds us to each other. That is what makes it possible for us to understand each other and to develop friendship and closeness.

Article III The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.

Real life is so all-absorbing that it doesn’t leave us time to create an imaginary, parallel life. It’s very hard not to stay in love with or be captivated by someone who makes us laugh and does so even though he often mistreats us; the hardest thing to give up is that companionable laughter, once you’ve met someone and decided to stay with them. How cast down we are by rejection, and how much power accrues to the person to whom we gave that power, for no one can take power unless it is first given or conferred, unless you’re prepared to adore and fear that person, unless you aspire to being loved by him or to enjoy his unswerving approval, any such ambition is a sign of conceit and that conceit is what weakens and leaves us defenseless: once that ambition remains unsatisfied or unfulfilled, it marks the beginning of our downfall. Sensations are unstable things, they become transformed in memory, they shift and dance, they can prevail over what was said and heard, over rejection or acceptance. Sometimes, sensations can make us give up and, at others, encourage us to try again. That Spanish mania for mixing business deals with a semblance of incipient friendship. In Spain, oddly enough, it’s considered far more prestigious to be known by one’s first name, and this applies to only four or five or six people: “Federico” is always García Lorca, just as “Rubén” is Rubén Darío, “Juan Ramón” is the Nobel Laureate Jiménez, “Ramón” is Gómez de la Serna, “Mossèn Cinto” is Verdaguer and, five centuries on, “Garcilaso” is Garcilaso de la Vega. In the face of ignorance, one is always free to invent. “Far too civilized. Airport hub. Business deals by the shedload. No, I don’t like it, I don’t like it all. Tons of visitors. The annual Buchmesse. Money calling to money. Rumor on the other hand is what lasts, it’s unstoppable, undying, the one thing that endures. I certainly don’t want to give that imbecile the gift of a rumor. He probably often had such attacks of oral literature. Whoever he was with and whatever the circumstances, he found it hard not to slip into pedantic, didactic mode. Like many unhappy, lonely people, he kept a diary. Curiosity makes us lose all caution. Unhappy people often insist on trying to uncover the full magnitude of their unhappiness, or choose to investigate other people’s lives as a distraction from their own. The eyes of the imagination, which are the eyes that best remember a scene and best recall it later. In the middle of the night everything seems plausible and real. Desire is a selfish thing too and will do almost anything to achieve satisfaction—lie, flatter, take risks, inveigle, make false promises. A nostalgia for the life you discarded always lingers on in the inner depths of your being, and, during bad times, you seek refuge in it as you might in a daydream or a fantasy. I sometimes think that the bonds of deceit and unhappiness are the strongest of all, as are those of error; they may bind even more closely than those of openness, contentment and sincerity. We do sometimes bring about what we most fear because the only way of freeing ourselves from that fear is for the bad thing actually to have happened, for it to be in the past and not in the future or in the realm of possibilities. For it to remain behind.

Literary friendship is impossible, it seems; at least, it is impossible for me. Indeed, all male friendships outside of work sometimes seem to be impossible: you look at each other at the restaurant at some point in the conversation and you know that each of you is thinking, man, this is futile, why are we here, we’re wasting our time, we have nothing to say, we’re not involved in some project together that we can bitch about, we can’t flirt, we feel like dummies discussing movies or books, we aren’t in some moral bind with a woman that we need to confess, we’ve each said the other is a genius several times already, and the whole thing is depressing and the tone is false and we might as well go home to our wives and children and rent buddy movies like Midnight Run or Planes, Trains, and Automobiles or The Pope of Greenwich Village> when we need a shot of the old camaraderie.

Friendship is a bondage that binds at least two or more bodies with a solitary soul or at least two or more souls in a solitary body.

We may ignore a lot of the uncomfortable conversations and subjects in the South, but one thing we do not ignore is the value of food as a binding source of love and friendship.

Where friendship binds the firmest ties, love tells the sweetest tale

It is a blessed thing to love on earth as we hope to love in heaven, and to begin that friendship here which is to endure for ever there. I am not now speaking of simple charity, a love due to all mankind, but of that spiritual friendship which binds souls together, leading them to share devotions and spiritual interests, so as to have but one mind between them.

Whipped or ice cream on your dumplings?" she asked them, once the crust browned and the filling bubbled. She sprinkled additional cinnamon sugar on top. Grace and Cade responded as one, "Ice cream." Cade leaned his elbows on the table, cut her a curious look. "I didn't think we had a thing in common." She gave him a repressive look. "Ice cream doesn't make us friends." Amelia scooped vanilla bean into the bowls with the dumplings. Her smile was small, secret, when she served their dessert, and she commented, "Friendships are born of likes and dislikes. Ice cream is binding." Not as far as Grace was concerned. Cade dug into his dessert. Amelia kept the conversation going. "I bet you're more alike than you realize." Why would that matter? Grace thought. She had no interest in this man. A simultaneous "doubtful" surprised them both. Amelia kept after them, Grace noted, pointing out, "You were both born, grew up, and never left Moonbright." "It's a great town," Cade said. "Family and friends are here." "You're here," Grace emphasized. Amelia patted her arm. "I'm very glad you've stayed. Cade, too. You're equally civic-minded." Grace blinked. We are? "The city council initiated Beautify Moonbright this spring, and you both volunteered." We did? Grace was surprised. Cade scratched his stubbled chin, said, "Mondays, I transport trees and mulch from Wholesale Gardens to grassy medians between roadways. Flower beds were planted along the nature trails to the public park." Grace hadn't realized he was part of the community effort. "I help with the planting. Most Wednesdays." Amelia was thoughtful. "You're both active at the senior center." Cade acknowledged, "I've thrown evening horseshoes against the Benson brothers. Lost. Turned around and beat them at cards." "I've never seen you there," Grace puzzled. "I stop by in the afternoons, drop off large-print library books and set up audio cassettes for those unable to read because of poor eyesight." "There's also Build a Future," Amelia went on to say. "Cade recently hauled scaffolding and worked on the roof at the latest home for single parents. Grace painted the bedrooms in record time." "The Sutter House," they said together. Once again. "Like minds," Amelia mused, as she sipped her sparkling water.

When I was little, my mother used to tell me that a woman becomes invisible to men at a certain age. Perhaps that's why she let him commit the acts that he did. She would become visible only then, once she'd served a purpose in his agenda, and she knew the secret would forever bind him to her.

How ironic, I later mused, that so many outsiders see Islam as a matter of cast-iron rules, of binding fatwas and unforgiving bans. As the year went on, I was repeatedly surprised by the broadness of its intellectual framework. This intrinsic flexibility could be used for good and ill alike: Islamic laws were only as humane as the Muslims interpreting them.

A hunter. A killer. One who probably also possessed the trait of long silences. She could imagine this Binadas, sharing a fire in the wilderness with Hull Beddict. In the course of an evening, a night and the following morning, perhaps a half-dozen words exchanged between them. And, she suspected, the forging of a vast, depthless friendship. These were the mysteries of men, so baffling to women. Where silences could become a conjoining of paths. Where a handful of inconsequential words could bind spirits in an ineffable understanding. Forces at play that she could sense, indeed witness, yet ever remaining outside them. Baffled and frustrated and half disbelieving.

The Lynch brothers, the brothers Lynch. In a way, the Lynch brothers had always been the most important and truest definition of the Lynch family. Niall was often gone, and Aurora was present but amorphous. Childhood was the three of them tearing through the woods and fields around the Barns, setting things on fire and digging holes and wrestling. Secrets bound them together far more tightly than friendship ever could, and so even when they went to school, they remained the Lynch brothers, the brothers Lynch. Even after Niall died and Ronan and Declan had fought for a year, they'd remained tangled together, because hate binds as strongly as love. The Lynch brothers, the brothers Lynch. Ronan didn't know who he would be without them.

We are still young, but we have done something remarkable already. We have stayed together. I think where we find ourselves is extremely significant. Significant because the next seven years, I think, are going to be final in a way that the last seven have not. In the next seven years every one of us will be in our thirties, some nearing forty. We are already starting marriages, families, careers, and settling into cities. In the next seven years those things are going to become more and more entrenched. The concrete we’re pouring into the habits of our lives is going to dry, and we are going to become the kind of people that we’re going to be for a long, long time. Let me put it another way. The college years and the early twenties lend themselves to a kind of emotional radicalness where you actually can and do completely shift your habits, and we become new people. That window, however, is likely closing. Thus, I think now is the time to consider seriously what kinds of people we are becoming. We have a good start, but I think the next seven years will be far more determinative of what kinds of friends we will be in the long run. The next seven years will show: Will we have the kind of friendships that sustain us through rocky years in marriage? Maybe more important, will we have the kind of friendships that sustain us through the difficulties of not being married yet? Will we have the kind of friends who live as examples to one another’s kids? Will we be the kind of friends who support one another financially if a job or business falls through or support one another emotionally if we hit dead ends in our careers? Will we be the kind of friends who won’t ignore and won’t let one another get into bad emotional, physical, sexual, or financial habits? I think the summary of what I’m longing for, the reasons why I decided to write all this down, is I see the beginnings of a covenant between us. And I see the possibility of covenant relationships forming in the long run. And I want to name the goodness, to give words to what the Lord is doing among us. I want to call one another not simply by what we are but by what we are hoping to become. I think that might be “covenant friends.” I leave whatever form it takes to you, but what I hope is that we begin to think and talk of one another in these terms, in terms of covenant relationships, where we acknowledge that the Lord is binding us together in ways that we don’t have the option to separate. In conclusion, I think our next seven years may be our most important, and I want us to consider pushing into those years consciously, as covenant friends. It might go a long way toward what I hope for as our end. This is what I imagine: that in the long run we will look at one another and say, “I have a lot of friends, but none like you.

Pleasure is good in itself, and great pleasures are to be particularly valued, for they are signs of the goodness of God. The best pleasures are shared. Yet it is not necessary to our human flourishing that we have any of them in particular. The traditional Christian teaching is that the goodness of sexual union lies in marriage, but one who does not experience this good has no more a diminishment of human flourishing than a person who never jumps out of an airplane. To speak broadly, all pleasures should be understood as ways of binding people together....

Covenantally binding ourselves (behaving!) includes commitment to the as-yet undiscovered reality, love, patience, humility, listening beyond our previously conceived categories, personal openness, and embracing with hope the half-understood promise of the real, to the end of communion and . . . friendship. All knowing is, at least paradigmatically, knowing whom.

Whatever she decides, whatever she does, it cannot sway your own resolutions. You have sacrificed something great for this girl – or for whatever she means to you – but do not let that change what you believe. It is visible in her eyes that she wavers, but do not think that the past binds you to any certain future.

Now I know it’s not blood that binds you to another, it is knowing that at the end of the day, whatever you may go through, your fates will always be Perfectly Entwined.

As he makes his way toward us, smiling nervously, I notice a slight thoracic scoliosis, a hint of jaundice in his eyes. I’m trying to break the diagnostic habit now that Sasha and I are in our mid-fifties. Friends and acquaintances have begun to be unlucky, and I’ve learned the hard way that detecting illness early puts me in a bind. “You saying I look like shit, Doc?” I’ve been asked, only half in jest. And there was my close friend and tennis partner, Chester, who was treated successfully for a lymphoma I suspected before anyone else. But for reasons I can’t comprehend, our friendship suffered. Chester avoids me now and plays tennis with other people.

The strength of our friendship was revealed by our willingness to confront openly the shift in our ties and to make necessary changes. We do not see each other as much as we once did, and we no longer call each other daily, but the positive ties that bind us remain intact.

Do not blame yourself for this,’ Marrock said. ‘All along you’ve done what you thought was right. I cannot fault you for that. And who is to say that things would have fared any better at Dun Crin? For all we know, our heads could be on spikes by now. We live. We have one another, oaths and friendship that bind us.

Friendship is the only relationship in the whole universe that has the capacity to bind two different spirits together.

Logen ambled over to him. If you’re going to travel with a man, and maybe fight alongside him, it’s best to talk, and laugh if you can. That way you can get an understanding, and then a trust. Trust is what binds a band together, and out there in the wilds that can make the difference between living or dying. Building that kind of trust takes time, and effort. Logen reckoned it was best to get started early, and today he had good humour to spare, so he stood next to Luthar and looked out at the park, trying to dream up some common ground in which to plant the seeds of an unlikely friendship.

with four distinct types of social bonds that are also fundamental building blocks in all human societies. These are: 1) the maternal relationship between mother and offspring; 2) the social hierarchies that bind individuals together in relationships of dominance and submission; 3) the friendships and alliances that can form between any two individuals; and 4) the sexual relationships that are formed and maintained between adult males and females.

Molly and Sylvie had been friends since before either of them really had a concrete idea that they could do unusual things, and had fallen naturally into a gossipy, girlish way of sharing their strange discoveries: Sylvie the places she went when she left herself, Molly the things she saw before they happened. But as they got older, their abilities became a tacit secret, something they realized they couldn't share widely with everyone they knew, binding their friendship further in a kind of collusion.

The warmth of true friendship and the love that binds the hearts of husband and wife are a foretaste of heaven.

That is what Lincoln saw in them, this love in all his friends, who held a close place in his heart, and Oscar, the one dream of his soul. He found it in them, in all of them, with their dirty pasts and their still recovering minds, in their words and in their friendship, and in their souls that spoke to each other in the mist of the clouds or the surging of the trees that knew that, in eternity, they would always find beauty. And that was an incredible world to wake up to.

After all, courage is knowing that fear is inevitable, but living your life despite of it,' she murmured, the words partly obscured by his shoulder. 'Don’t fear love anymore. Sometimes, you just have to keep going and remember that you are not your heartache...' her voice was soft, pronounced, '...and you will find a way.

The two girls grew up with the same feeling of love for years and knew it was home, and better than Heaven, which was only a place.

Silences like these were never uncomfortable for them, never an awkward space squabbling for meaningless words to fill it. It was acceptance, of a sort, an understanding. These were the people who had lived long and fitfully enough to discover that they were not alone, that there were people out there who would love and fight with them.

They were sitting close to each other, heads together as if in scheme. He had suddenly wished that she had been with him at their house. He could imagine her as a little girl, eyes wild and hair untamed, running on her small but sturdy feet, climbing trees and earning scrapes, picking fruit from the highest branch.

But the question always snuck up on her whenever it could, between comfortable, drawn-out moments of silence, through the breaking of dawn when they were gallantly trying to stay up to catch a glimpse of the sunrise, or through their watered down smiles and hands clutching wine glasses, yearning desperately for a quick abandonment of their too-sharp, too-stark minds.