Dropped Friendship Quotes

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.

You may not remember the time you let me go first. Or the time you dropped back to tell me it wasn't that far to go. Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up. You may not remember any of those, but I do and this is what I have to say to you: Today, no matter what it takes, we ride home together.

When twilight drops her curtain down And pins it with a star Remember that you have a friend Though she may wander far.

Bryce's face crumpled as she lurched to her feet, sprinting to the Gate. She didn't care how it was possible as Danika said again, "Light it up" Then Bryce was laughing and sobbing as she screamed, "LIGHT IT UP, DANIKA! LIGHT IT UP, LIGHT IT UP, LIGHT IT UP!" Bryce slammed her palm onto the bronze disk of the Gate. And soul to soul with the friend whom she had not forgotten, the friend who had not forgotten her, even in death, Bryce made the Drop.

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of acts of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.

Love, whether it's friendship or more, is like a cup. It fills up drop by drop, until one last drop and the cup is full. The liquid hangs there almost above the rim, hangs there on surface tension alone and you know that one more drop and it will spill over.

I have always loved you, princess," Robin Goodfellow promised, his green eyes shining in the darkness. "I always will. And I'll take whatever you can give me." I looked down, unable to meet his open stare, human fears and self-consciousness coming to the surface. "Even if all I can offer is friendship? Will that still be enough?" "Well, not really." Puck dropped his hand, his voice turning light and carefree again, more like the Puck I knew. "Damn not being able to lie. Princess, if you suddenly decide ice-boy is a first-class jerk and that you can't stand him, I'll always be here. But for now, I'll settle for being the best friend.

You destroy me." "Juliette," he says and he mouths the name, barely speaking at all, and he's pouring molten lava into my limbs and I never even knew I could melt straight to death. "I want you," he says. He says "I want all of you. I want you inside and out and catching your breath and aching for me like I ache for you." He says it like it's a lit cigarette lodged in his throat, like he wants to dip me in warm honey and he says "It's never been a secret. I've never tried to hide that from you. I've never pretended I wanted anything less." "You-you said you wanted f-friendship-" "Yes," he says, he swallows, "I did. I do. I do want to be your friend. He nods and I register the slight movement in the air between us. "I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend," he says. "The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body, Juliette-" "No," I gasp. "Don't-don't s-say that-" "I want to know where to touch you," he says. "I want to know how to touch you. I want to know how to convince you to design a smile just for me." I feel his chest rising, falling, up and down and up and down and "Yes," he says. "I do want to be your friend." He says "I want to be your best friend in the entire world." "I want so many things," he whispers. "I want your mind. Your strength. I want to be worth your time." His fingers graze the hem of my top and he says "I want this up." He tugs on the waist of my pants and says "I want these down." He touches the tips of his fingers to the sides of my body and says, "I want to feel your skin on fire. I want to feel your heart racing next to mine and I want to know it's racing because of me, because you want me. Because you never," he says, he breathes, "never want me to stop. I want every second. Every inch of you. I want all of it." And I drop dead, all over the floor. "Juliette." I can't understand why I can still hear him speaking because I'm dead, I'm already dead, I've died over and over and over again. He swallows, hard, his chest heaving, his words a breathless, shaky whisper when he says "I'm so-I'm so desperately in love with you-

She doesn’t plant a seed of friendship and tend to it with gentle watering and sunlight. She drops into your life, fully formed, and just is. A friend in completion

Mental illness doesn't choose the most talented or the smartest or the richest or the poorest. It shows no mercy and often arrives like an unexpected storm, dropping an endless downpour on young dreams.

I’m sorry I ever asked you guys to be friends. You don’t have to be friends. You don’t even have to like each other. Forget I said anything.” Warner drops his crossed arms. Kenji raises his eyebrows. “I promise,” I say. “No more forced hangout sessions. No more spending time alone without me. Okay?” “You swear?” Kenji says. “I swear.” “Thank God,” Warner says. “Same, bro. Same.” And I roll my eyes, irritated. This is the first thing they’ve managed to agree on in over a week: their mutual hatred of my hopes for their friendship.

You’re like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities’ desires dropped like flies. In the end the gods always ended up miserable and alone." — Kate Daniels

Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.

Chingachgook grasped the hand that, in the warmth of feeling, the scout had stretched across the fresh earth, and in that attitude of friendship these intrepid woodsmen bowed their heads together, while scalding tears fell to their feet, watering the grave of Uncas like drops of falling rain.

Every decent friendship comes with a drop of hatred. But that hatred is like honey in the tea. It makes it addictive.

Esca tossed the slender papyrus roll onto the cot, and set his own hands over Marcus's. "I have not served the Centurion because I was his slave," he said, dropping unconsciously into the speech of his own people. "I have served Marcus, and it was not slave-service...my stomach will be glad when we start on this hunting trail.

You're weird," Nick grumbled, but he turned his face back to critically examine the new hand. "You're weird," Jamie returned. "As soon as this whole magical war is over, I'm going to make us some friendship bracelets, and we will wear them everywhere because we are best friends." "Drop dead," said Nick, and Jamie looked serenely pleased.

Sylvie's sort of pregnant. Well not sort of. She is. Pregnant. Actually pregnant with a baby.' 'Oh Dexter! Do you know the father? I'm kidding! Congratulations, Dex. God, aren't you meant to space your bombshells out a bit. Not just drop them all at once?' She held his face in both hands, looked at it. 'You're getting married?-' 'Yes' -'And you're going to be a father?' 'I know! Fuck me a father!' 'Is that allowed? I mean will they let you?' 'Apparently' 'I think it's wonderful. Fucking hell, Dexter, I turn my back for one minute...!' She hugged him once again her arms high round his neck. She felt drunk, full of affection and a certain sadness too, as if something was coming to an end. She wanted to say something along these lines, but thought it best to do this through a joke. 'Of course you've destroyed any chance I had of future happiness, but I'm delighted for you, really.

How shall I remember thee? As a drop of eternal summer, or a blossom of tender spring? As a spark of autumn's stirring fire, or perhaps as the frost of winter's longest night? No, it shall not be as one of these, for these shall all come to pass, and you and I, though parted by sea and earth, will never fade.

What's strange about the whole thing is that although it's riddled with nonsense, altogether it's true - Julie's told our story, mine and hers, our friendship, so truthfully. It is us. We even had the same dream at the same time. How could we have had the same dream at the same time? How can something so wonderful and mysterious be true? But it is. And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true: when I read it, when I read what Julie's written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I'm reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She's right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can't be landed, stuck in the climb - alive, alive, ALIVE.

A friend drops their plans when you're in trouble, shares joy in your accomplishments, feels sad when you're in pain. A friend encourages your dreams and offers advice--but when you don't follow it, they still respect and love you.

I dedicate the merit of the occasion to all beings. This gesture of universal friendship has been likened to a drop of fresh spring water. If we put it on a rock in the sunshine, it will soon evaporate. If we put it in the ocean, however, it will never be lost. Thus the wish is made that we not keep the teachings to ourselves but to use them to benefit others.

Christian friendships are call-and-response friendships. We tell each other over and over, back and forth, the truth of who we are and who God is. Over dinner and on walks, dropping off soup when someone is sick, and in prayer over the phone, we speak the good news to each other. And we become good news to every other.

Just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem, as it were, to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said, -- he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing, Yet I wept for it! -- this, ... the paper's light ... Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed As if God's future thundered on my past. This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paled With lying at my heart that beat too fast. And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availed If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake. She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back. Sleepy air seemed to have followed her. The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder. They breathed. German and Jewish lungs.

Slowness means cleaving perfectly to time, so closely that the seconds fall one by one, drop by drop like the steady dripping of a tap on stone. This stretching of time deepens space. It is one of the secrets of walking: a slow approach to landscapes that gradually renders them familiar. Like the regular encounters that deepen friendship.

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an Ocean.

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at least one which makes the heart run over.

I would say"—he shaped the words close to her mouth, as if each of them was its own kiss, a private prayer—"I love you as a man loves a woman, but we both know that love is not bound by such narrow terms. So instead let me simply tell you that I love you. I love you with the unfading flame of my friendship. With every drop of ardour in my blood. I love you with my soul, as some reserve their faith for absent gods. I love you as I believe in what is right and hope for what is good. I love you with everything I am and ever was—and if you will only let me, with every day that comes, and every self that I could ever be.

Ali In Battle Learn from Ali how to fight without your ego participating. God's Lion did nothing that didn't originate from his deep center. Once in battle he got the best of a certain knight and quickly drew his sword. The man, helpless on the ground, spat in Ali's face. Ali dropped his sword, relaxed, and helped the man to his feet. "Why have you spared me? How has lightning contracted back into its cloud? Speak, my prince, so that my soul can begin to stir in me like an embryo." Ali was quiet and then finally answered, "I am God's Lion, not the lion of passion. The sun is my lord. I have no longing except for the One. When a wind of personal reaction comes, I do not go along with it. There are many winds full of anger, and lust and greed. They move the rubbish around, but the solid mountain of true nature stays where it's always been. There's nothing now except the divine qualities. Come through the opening into me. Your impudence was better than any reverence, because in this moment I am you and you are me. I give you this opened heart as God gives gifts: the poison of your spit has become the honey of friendship.

In 1621, colonists invited Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoags, to a feast after a recent land deal. Massasoit came with ninety of his men. That meal is why we still eat a meal together in November. Celebrate it as a nation. But that one wasn’t a thanksgiving meal. It was a land-deal meal. Two years later there was another, similar meal meant to symbolize eternal friendship. Two hundred Indians dropped dead that night from an unknown poison.

We cannot tell the precise moment when a friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at least one which makes the heart run over.

Heres the rundown: I'm crazy, you're crazy, we get along, we're best friends. if you break the friendship circle. I will come after you, I will find you and I will not hesitate to drop kick you to the ground in defence

Light it up, Bryce!' -- Danika Then Bryce was laughing and sobbing as she screamed, 'LIGHT IT UP, DANIKA! LIGHT IT UP! LIGHT IT UP! LIGHT IT UP!' And soul to soul with the friend whom she had not forgotten, the friend who had not forgotten her, even in death, Bryce made the Drop.

We dropped our hands, both embarrassed by the sincerity of the moment. But I was learning, Sometimes you had to put it all out there, no matter how hard it felt to do so. When the people in your life were worth it, so was the risk.

Ari's words felt like drops of sunlight upon my skin, and my frame was burning with longing.

Eventually, I developed my own image of teh "befriending" impulse behind my depression. Imagine that from early in my life, a friendly figure, standing a block away, was trying to get my attention by shouting my name, wanting to teach me some hard but healing truths about myself. But I-- fearful of what I might hear or arrogantly trying to live wihtout help or simply too busy with my ideas and ego and ethics to bother-- ignored teh shouts and walked away. So this figure, still with friendly intent, came closer and shouted more loudly, but AI kept walking. Ever closer it came, close enough to tap me on the shoulder, but I walked on. Frustrated by my unresponsiveness, the figure threw stones at my back, then struck me with a stick, still wanting simply to get my attention. But despite teh pain, I kept walking away. Over teh years, teh befriending intent of this figure never disapppeared but became obscured by the frustration cuased by my refusal to turn around. Since shouts and taps, stones and sticks had failed to do the trick, there was only one thing left: drop the nuclear bomb called depression on me, not with the intent to kill but as a last-ditch effort to get me to turn and ask the simple question, "What do you want?" When I was finally able to make the turn-- and start to absorb and act on the self-knowledge that then became available to me-- I began to get well. The figure calling to me all those years was, I believe, what Thomas Merton calls "true self." This is not the ego self that wants to inflate us (or deflate us, another from of self-distortion), not the intellectual self that wants to hover above the mess of life in clear but ungrounded ideas, not the ethical self that wants to live by some abstract moral code. It is the self-planted in us by the God who made us in God's own image-- the self that wants nothing more, or less, than for us to be who we were created to be. True self is true friend. One ignores or rejects such friendship only at one's peril.

But really, both of them knew why they kept attending these parties: because they had become one of the few opportunities the four of them had to be together, and at times they seemed to be their only opportunity to create memories the four of them could share, keeping their friendship alive by dropping bundles of kindling onto a barely smoldering black smudge of fire. It was their way of pretending everything was the same.

Eventually this will happen to us. You will drop bits of our friendship here and there and eventually, I will stop picking us back up, picking you back up, putting us back together again. Eventually we might forget where we put it, this friendship of ours, and we will both let it fall through the cracks of a floorboard, forgotten in the memory of old mix tapes and letters boxed in an attic somewhere.

He dropped his voice. “Not as many people have as free a mind and affection as you do, Eliza. Not many understand that we accord a certain friendship and respect to our Negroes. And ’tis a dangerous pursuit.

Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one's self — it makes little difference; for when the strenuous mood is on one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it; for, as Moltke says of war, destruction pure and simple is its essence. This is what makes it so invaluable an ally of every other passion. The sweetest delights are trampled on with a ferocious pleasure the moment they offer themselves as checks to a cause by which our higher indignations are elicited. It costs then nothing to drop friendships, to renounce long-rooted privileges and possessions, to break with social ties. Rather do we take a stern joy in the astringency and desolation; and what is called weakness of character seems in most cases to consist of the inaptitude for these sacrificial moods, of which one's own inferior self and its pet softnesses must often be the targets and the victims.

Because there’s no formal etiquette for ending a friendship, most people do it in the laziest, most passive and painless way possible, by unilaterally dropping any effort to sustain it and letting the other person figure it out for themselves. (I

True friendship is a sacred, important thing, and it happens when we drop down into that deeper level of who we are, when we cross over into the broken, fragile parts of ourselves. We have to give something up in order to get friendship like that. We have to give up our need to be perceived as perfect. We have to give up our ability to control what people think of us. We have to overcome the fear that when they see the depths of who we are, they’ll leave. But what we give up is nothing in comparison to what this kind of friendship gives to us. Friendship is about risk. Love is about risk. If we can control it and manage it and manufacture it, then it’s something else, but if it’s really love, really friendship, it’s a little scary around the edges.

When someone drops his authority for you, you should at least drop your ego for him.

If You Respect Their Preparation, You never Drop the Baton

AS a rule Crassus did not bear grudges. This was not because he had a good heart but because other people rarely engaged his emotions. He had little difficulty in dropping friends or making up quarrels as occasion served. Cicero, whose view of friendship was different, had a very low opinion of him.

Do you know what the worst thing about literature is? . What? I said. That you end up being friends with writers. And friendship, treasure though it may be, destroys your critical sense. Once, said Don Pancracio, Monteforte Toledo dropped this riddle in my lap: a poet is lost in a city on the verge of collapse, with no money, or friends, or anyone to turn to. And of course, he neither wants nor plans to turn to anyone. For several days he roams the city and the country, eating nothing, or eating scraps. He's even stopped writing. Or he writes in his head: in other words, he hallucinates. All signs point to an imminent death. His drastic disappearance foreshadows it. And yet the poet doesn't die.

Later, when April dropped me off at the house on her way to pick up Caitlin, my phone buzzed with a text. I smiled. Stacey. "You alive?" "I'm ok." I texted back. "How was your date?" Three fire emojis popped up in response, followed by an eggplant and ... were those water droplets? Oh, dear. I had no answer for that.

A mansion begins with one brick. A forest begins with one tree. A harvest begins with one seed. An ocean begins with one drop. A friendship begins with one gesture. A fire begins with one spark. A revolution begins with one idea.

What’s strange about the whole thing is that although it’s riddled with nonsense, altogether it’s true – Julie’s told our story, mine and hers, our friendship, so truthfully. It is us. And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true: when I read it, when I read what Julie’s written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I’m reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She’s right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can’t be landed, stuck in the climb – alive, alive, ALIVE.

In the midst of an enchanted, crystal forest lies my soul, beneath a weeping willow tree. On the shadowed side of this mystical haven, heart beats as thunder warns of a raging storm! Yesterday went well in deeds, but silence fell upon me... words could not express these lonesome thoughts. I closed my eyes to shut the doors of reality. Must you always need to understand me; shan't I keep a bit of mystery for my sake? These eyes plead, as I look up to you for such moments of peace and tranquility. Tears have fallen to the earth-- drops that glisten on blades of grass, even in the dark of night; stars shine brighter in my sight! Today, I remember sharing my life with you; Vows of love and friendship, forever spoken; and now, I lie alone beneath a weeping willow tree. Tommorrow, I shall walk alongside a never-ending creek.

A friend will soothe, like a cough drop smooth, Making the symptoms of our condition not so bad. You will soothe me, like a cough drop thick, Making the pain go away while I'm still sick. There's nothing we can do to close our interval, But celebrate your flavor that makes a sore life bearable.

It physically fucking hurt me when you slammed the door on me.” “It hurt me, too. But please understand, I still can’t do this with you.” “You can do this with me, but you won’t. There’s a difference, and I would drop it, but I know how you feel about me. You don’t want this limited to friendship any more than I do.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a friend any more than you do. I think “hard” when it should be “soft,” or “gentle” when “forceful” is the key. Often it’s giving every last drop of blood, then skinning myself and giving the skin too, when all you really want is my skeleton, wagging a bony finger, signing how much I love you. I’ve drained and skinned and boned. I’ve signed back obscenities and watched your bone dust drift away. No, I don’t know the meaning of “friend.” Teach me?

Such is friendship, that through it we love places and seasons; for as bright bodies emit rays to a distance, and flowers drop their sweet leaves on the ground around them, so friends impart favor even to the places where they dwell. With friends even poverty is pleasant. Words cannot express the joy which a friend imparts; they only can know who have experienced. A friend is dearer than the light of heaven, for it would be better for us that the sun were exhausted than that we should be without friends.

My son, you are just an infant now, but on that day when the world disrobes of its alluring cloak, it is then that I pray this letter is in your hands. Listen closely, my dear child, for I am more than that old man in the dusty portrait beside your bed. I was once a little boy in my mother’s arms and a babbling toddler on my father's lap. I played till the sun would set and climbed trees with ease and skill. Then I grew into a fine young man with shoulders broad and strong. My bones were firm and my limbs were straight; my hair was blacker than a raven's beak. I had a spring in my step and a lion's roar. I travelled the world, found love and married. Then off to war I bled in battle and danced with death. But today, vigor and grace have forsaken me and left me crippled. Listen closely, then, as I have lived not only all the years you have existed, but another forty more of my own. My son, We take this world for a permanent place; we assume our gains and triumphs will always be; that all that is dear to us will last forever. But my child, time is a patient hunter and a treacherous thief: it robs us of our loved ones and snatches up our glory. It crumbles mountains and turns stone to sand. So who are we to impede its path? No, everything and everyone we love will vanish, one day. So take time to appreciate the wee hours and seconds you have in this world. Your life is nothing but a sum of days so why take any day for granted? Don't despise evil people, they are here for a reason, too, for just as the gift salt offers to food, so do the worst of men allow us to savor the sweet, hidden flavor of true friendship. Dear boy, treat your elders with respect and shower them with gratitude; they are the keepers of hidden treasures and bridges to our past. Give meaning to your every goodbye and hold on to that parting embrace just a moment longer--you never know if it will be your last. Beware the temptation of riches and fame for both will abandon you faster than our own shadow deserts us at the approach of the setting sun. Cultivate seeds of knowledge in your soul and reap the harvest of good character. Above all, know why you have been placed on this floating blue sphere, swimming through space, for there is nothing more worthy of regret than a life lived void of this knowing. My son, dark days are upon you. This world will not leave you with tears unshed. It will squeeze you in its talons and lift you high, then drop you to plummet and shatter to bits . But when you lay there in pieces scattered and broken, gather yourself together and be whole once more. That is the secret of those who know. So let not my graying hairs and wrinkled skin deceive you that I do not understand this modern world. My life was filled with a thousand sacrifices that only I will ever know and a hundred gulps of poison I drank to be the father I wanted you to have. But, alas, such is the nature of this life that we will never truly know the struggles of our parents--not until that time arrives when a little hand--resembling our own--gently clutches our finger from its crib. My dear child, I fear that day when you will call hopelessly upon my lifeless corpse and no response shall come from me. I will be of no use to you then but I hope these words I leave behind will echo in your ears that day when I am no more. This life is but a blink in the eye of time, so cherish each moment dearly, my son.

It's not a bad thing to play second fiddle if the first chair is a virtuoso.

keeping their friendship alive by dropping bundles of kindling onto a barely smoldering black smudge of fire.

Blood shall drop out of wood, and the stone shall give his voice, and the people shall be troubled:

Consider with thyself; as the rain is more than the drops, and as the fire is greater than the smoke; but the drops and the smoke remain behind: so the quantity which is past did more exceed.

It has to do with me because it has to do with you," Young says, his voice dropping. "Jaewon-ah, we've been friends longer than we've been--." "Enemies?" I suggest weakly. "Than we've been lost.

Our life's great friendships are dropped on us in strange little ways but for providential reasons. We are meant to encounter our opposites in life and be changed by them – transformed, in some manner.

What was it like for you before the gay movement?' the young gay student asked. 'You might not believe this.' Foucault replied, 'but I actually liked the scene before the gay liberation, when everything was more covert. It was like an underground fraternity, exciting and a bit dangerous. Friendship meant a lot, it meant a lot of trust, we protected each other, we related to each other by secret codes.

The one thing I have insisted on with all of my friends, regardless of class or station in life, is to be able to speak truthfully. If I cannot be open and frank with a friend, or he with me, I drop him.

Society doesn't officially recognize friendship as an institution in the way it recognizes sexual relationships, so there's no real protocol for ending one. If you've been going out, dating, or just sleeping with someone for even a month or two an you want to stop seeing him, you're expected to have a conversation with him letting him know it and giving him some bogus explanation. This conversation is seldom pleasant, and it ranges in tone from brittle adult adult discussions in coffee shops to armed standoffs in day care centers, but once it's over, you at least know your status. Because there's no formal etiquette for ending a friendship, most people do it in the laziest, most passive and painless way possible, by unilaterally dropping any effort to sustain it and letting the other person figure it out for themselves.

So instead let me simply tell you that I love you. I love you with the unfading flame of my friendship. With every drop of ardour in my blood. I love you with my soul, as some reserve their faith for absent gods. I love you as I believe in what is right and hope for what is good. I love you with everything I am and ever was—and if you will only let me, with every day that comes, and every self that I could ever be.

The thing about Myla, August is learning, is that she doesn’t plant a seed of friendship and tend to it with gentle watering and sunlight. She drops into your life, fully formed, and just is. A friend in completion.

Where are we heading?” “The closest wooded area to here is Kenwood Academy’s estate. Good place to hide, especially at night.” “If we’re going into the woods, I definitely need to change.” I glanced back at her as we returned to the curb where the cab had dropped us off. “Or you could just go home.” She crossed her arms and avoided my gaze, scowling. “You’re sick of me already? That must be a record.” I lifted my eyes to the heavens. Women. “This creature tore out a woman’s throat and busted her chest cavity open like a piñata. I don’t like the thought of it being anywhere near you.” “Did it ever occur to you that I feel the same way?” Surprise flooded over me. “No, it…actually didn’t.” “I know I’m not as strong or as smart as you are, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help. We’re partners, aren’t we?” “Yeah,” I said, and couldn’t stop the smile creeping across my lips. “I guess we are.” She tossed a quick look at me and frowned. “Quit it.” “What?” “I hate it when you do that.” “You hate it when I smile?” “No, when you make that, ‘aw, she does have a heart’ face. You look like a Disney prince.” I laughed. “My bad. I’ll work on that.

Neil looked up, ready to turn Nicky down, but Andrew had come up beside Nicky in the doorway. Neil looked at him and thought about Nicky's worried appeal last fall, the warning that one day Exy wouldn't be enough on its own. It could be a safe haven from his thoughts and a reason to get up and the inspiration to fight harder. It could mean the world to him, but it couldn't be everything. It couldn't fill in the broken pieces of him the way the Foxes did. It wouldn't drop everything to get him from the airport or come back for him without question or call him "friend". Neil built his life around Exy after his mother died because he needed something to live for, but Neil wasn't alone anymore.

 ‘We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at least one which makes the heart run over.’ 

Images barraged him. Connections darted electric. Veins. Roots. Forked lightning. Tributaries. Branches. Vines snaked around trees, herds of animals, drops of water running together. I don’t understand. Fingers twined together. Shoulder leaned on shoulder. Fist bumping fist. Hand dragging Adam up from the dirt. Cabeswater rifled madly through Adam’s own memories and flashed them through his mind. It hurled images of Gansey, Ronan, Noah, and Blue so fast that Adam couldn’t keep up with all of them. Then the grid of lightning blasted across the world, an illuminated grid of energy. Adam still did not understand, and then he did. There was more than one Cabeswater. Or more of whatever it was.

The last time I checked, I wasn’t the one who tripped over a glass container of sugar that I had myself dropped... after, of course, having received several bruises from an attempt to retrieve a flip-flop that had somehow ended up in the sink.

Their friendship sometimes struck Frances as being like a piece of soap-like a piece of ancient kitchen soap that had got worn to the shape of her hand, but which had been dropped to the floor so many times it was never quite free of its bits of cinder.

Their friendship sometimes struck Frances as being like a piece of soap – like a piece of ancient kitchen soap that had got worn to the shape of her hand, but which had been dropped to the floor so many times it was never quite free of its bits of cinder.

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at least one which makes the heart run over". From Fahrenheit 451_RAY Bradbury

As for his friends, he no longer had any. One after another they had all dropped away, as though friendship had become a burden which he had at first made every effort to shoulder and then had gradually realised that there was no need for and let go, and it had gone.

In this unequal contest betwixt common sense and philosophy, the latter will always come off both with dishonour and loss; nor can she ever thrive till this rivalship is dropped, these encroachments given up, and a cordial friendship restored: for in reality common sense holds nothing of philosophy, nor needs her aid. But, on the other hand, philosophy (if I may be permitted to change the metaphor) has no other root but the principles of common sense; it grows out of them, and draws its nourishment from them: severed from this root, its honours wither, its sap is dried up, it dies and rots.

Learning how to play an instrument has always been near the top of my to-do list, but what are the chances now? There's little downtime with a column and a two-year-old, and after reading Goldilocks and the three Bears and going through half a bottle of wine with dinner on an average evening, imagining a day when I join Nathaniel on the Elgar Cello Concerto is not a vision but a hallucination. I'm at the point where the things on your to-do list get transferred to a should-have-done list, and one reason I write a column is for the privilege of vicariously sampling other worlds, dropping in with my passport, my notebook and my curiosity.

I haven't come here to settle down. I've come here to depart. I am a merchant with lots of goods, selling to whoever will buy. I didn't come to create any problems, I'm only here to love. A Heart makes a good home for the Friend. I've come to build some hearts. I'm a little drunk from this Friendship -- Any lover would know the shape I'm in. I've come to exchange my twoness, to disappear in One. He is my teacher. I am his servant. I am a nightingale in His garden. I've come to the Teacher's garden to be happy and die singing. They say "Souls which know each other here, know each other there." I've come to know a Teacher and to show myself as I am.

I wanted to understand people. Mostly, why folks don’t care about one other, just keep to themselves. Why their close friends and relatives would only matter until they really need them emotionally. I wanted to know why if somebody new and interesting comes along, then the old friends are dropped. People’s behaviors baffled me.

The writer Wesley Morris calls this experience the trapdoor of racism. “For people of color, some aspect of friendship with white people involves an awareness that you could be dropped through a trapdoor of racism at any moment, by a slip of the tongue, or at a campus party, or in a legislative campaign,” he wrote in 2015. “But it’s not always anticipated.” The trapdoor describes the limited level of comfort that Black people can feel around white people who are part of their lives in a meaningful way. Even if these white people decide they will confront racism every day, it’s guaranteed they will sometimes screw up and disappoint the Black people they know.

WARMING UP TO the crèche turned out to be easy. Warming up to the other mothers there isn’t. I’m aware that Anglo-American-style instant bonding between women doesn’t happen in France. I’ve heard that female friendships here start out slowly, and can take years to ramp up. (Though once you’re finally ‘in’ with a French woman, you’re supposedly stuck with her for life. Whereas your English-speaking insta-friends can drop you at any time.)

Chase took a long breath. “There’s no way around saying this, other than just coming straight out with it. I’ve been an idiot—an ass. Time and time again, I’ve done the wrong thing by you.” Her mouth dropped open. “And this whole time I’d been trying to do the right thing by not being with you. I didn’t want to betray Mitch by hooking up with his little sister. I didn’t want to somehow mess up our friendship either, because you have been such a huge part of my life.” He took a deep breath. “And I never wanted to be like my father—to treat you like he treated my mom. And it was stupid—I get that now. Chad was right. Father never loved our mother, but it’s different for me—it’s different for us. It always has been.” The whole time he spoke, he never looked away from her. She opened her mouth to say something but he rushed ahead. “But all I’ve managed to do is screw things up. That night in the club…I wasn’t drunk.” Madison shifted uncomfortably. “I know.” “It was a lame excuse, and I’m sorry. That night—I should’ve told you how I really felt. And every night thereafter,” he said, taking a step forward. “I should’ve told you how I felt the night in that damn cabin, too.” Her heart swelled as hope grew in a tangle of emotions she could never unravel. All of this seemed surreal. Tears rushed her eyes as she reached behind her, grasping the edges of her desk. “And how do you feel?” Chase’s smile revealed those deep dimples she loved, and when he spoke, his voice was husky. “Aw hell, Maddie, I’m not good at this kind of stuff. You…you are my world. You’ve always been my world, ever since I can remember.” At Bridget’s soft inhale, Madison placed a trembling hand over her mouth. Stepping forward, he placed a hand over hers, gently pulling it away from her mouth. “It’s the truth. You are my everything. I love you. I have for longer than I realized. Please tell me my boneheadedness hasn’t screwed things up beyond repair for us.

Nor could I fail to recall my friendship with Howard K. Beale, professor of American History at the University of North Carolina. There he was, one day in 1940, standing just outside my room in the men’s dormitory at St. Augustine’s, in his chesterfield topcoat, white silk scarf, and bowler hat, with his calling card in hand, perhaps looking for a silver tray in which to drop it. Paul Buck, whom he knew at Harvard, had told him to look me up. He wanted to invite me to his home in Chapel Hill to have lunch or dinner and to meet his family. From that point on we saw each other regularly. After I moved to Durham, he invited me each year to give a lecture on “The Negro in American Social Thought” in one of his classes. One day when I was en route to Beale’s class, I encountered one of his colleagues, who greeted me and inquired where I was going. I returned the greeting and told him that I was going to Howard Beale’s class to give a lecture. After I began the lecture I noticed that Howard was called out of the class. He returned shortly, and I did not give it another thought. Some years later, after we both had left North Carolina, Howard told me that he had been called out to answer a long-distance phone call from a trustee of the university who had heard that a Negro was lecturing in his class. The trustee ordered Beale to remove me immediately. In recounting this story, Beale told me that he had said that he was not in the habit of letting trustees plan his courses, and he promptly hung up. Within a few years Howard accepted a professorship at the University of Wisconsin. A favorite comment from Chapel Hill was that upon his departure from North Carolina, blood pressures went down all over the state.

I just care about you so much … but I’ve always got this fear that … one day you’ll leave. Or Pip and Jason will leave, or … I don’t know.’ Fresh tears fell from my cheeks. ‘I’m never going to fall in love, so … my friendships are all I have, so … I just … can’t bear the idea of losing any of my friends. Because I’m never going to have that one special person.’ ‘Can you let me be that person?’ Rooney said quietly. I sniffed loudly. ‘What d’you mean?’ ‘I mean I want to be your special person.’ [...] ‘But you know what I realised on my walk?’ she said. ‘I realise that I love you, Georgia.’ My mouth dropped open. ‘Obviously I’m not romantically in love with you. But I realised that whatever these feelings are for you, I …’ She grinned wildly. ‘I feel like I am in love. Me and you – this is a fucking love story! I feel like I’ve found something most people just don’t get. I feel at home around you in a way I have never felt in my fucking life. And maybe most people would look at us and think that we’re just friends, or whatever, but I know that it’s just … so much MORE than that.’ She gestured dramatically at me with both hands. ‘You changed me. You … you fucking saved me, I swear to God. I know I still do a lot of dumb stuff and I say the wrong things and I still have days where I just feel like shit but … I’ve felt happier over the past few weeks than I have in years.’ I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. Rooney dropped to her knees. ‘Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of ‘friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.’ She grabbed the bunch of flowers and practically threw them at me. ‘And I bought these for you because I honestly didn’t know how else to express any of that to you.’ I was crying. I just started crying again. Rooney wiped the tears off my cheeks.

When I was growing up, you couldn't be tender; that was not a safe option. This is both a function of masculinity as it's performed in our society, as well as the kind of neighborhood and circumstances I grew up in." One of the limitations of it is the exhaustion of having to have your guard up. "It's like having to put on armor. I guess that's the best metaphor that I could use. And I really do mean that metaphor very intentionally. Because it isn't just the protective shield, but it also makes it harder for you to move around in the world. And it's heavy, it's a burden. I've worked really hard in my adulthood to (a) kind of drop some of that shit; but (b) make sure that I'm in circumstances where I don't have to wear it in the first place. But it's fucking exhausting. And it's painful.

This angered him so badly, that he turned against everything he cared about: learning, foster parents, and hopes to make it into college; he dropped out of school. He ran away from the foster family that was caring for him at the time and eventually found Adrian, and then we somehow found each other and we happily formed our little group of outcasts. James is 18; he is smarter than Nathan, but not as technologically inclined as him. James looks out for me. He keeps accounts in order, pays receipts, and calculates risks-benefits for different jobs we decide to take. He’s like the vice-president of our “little robbers’ band”, while Adrian is the president. James and Adrian argue quite often about all sorts of things - James is very critical of Adrian and Adrian can’t stand to be contradicted;

We rested, people and octopus regarding one another for several more minutes. And then, to my surprise, she floated up again to us. As she rose, we scanned the bottom of the barrel and saw that she had dropped the squid Wilson had fed her. We wished she had eaten, but we learned something new: Hunger was not the reason she had surfaced earlier, and it wasn't what brought her now. The reason she surfaced was abundantly clear. She had not interacted with us, or tasted our skin, or seen us above her tank for ten full months. She was sick and weak. In less than four weeks, on a Saturday morning in May, Bill would find her, plane, thin, and still, dead at the bottom of her barrel. Yet, despite everything, we knew in that moment that Octavia had not only remembered us and recognized us; she had wanted to touch us again.

Weak and trembling from passion, Major Flint found that after a few tottering steps in the direction of Tilling he would be totally unable to get there unless fortified by some strong stimulant, and turned back to the club-house to obtain it. He always went dead-lame when beaten at golf, while Captain Puffin was lame in any circumstances, and the two, no longer on speaking terms, hobbled into the club-house, one after the other, each unconscious of the other's presence. Summoning his last remaining strength Major Flint roared for whisky, and was told that, according to regulation, he could not be served until six. There was lemonade and stone ginger-beer. You might as well have offered a man-eating tiger bread and milk. Even the threat that he would instantly resign his membership unless provided with drink produced no effect on a polite steward, and he sat down to recover as best he might with an old volume of Punch. This seemed to do him little good. His forced abstemiousness was rendered the more intolerable by the fact that Captain Puffin, hobbling in immediately afterwards, fetched from his locker a large flask of the required elixir, and proceeded to mix himself a long, strong tumblerful. After the Major's rudeness in the matter of the half-crown, it was impossible for any sailor of spirit to take the first step towards reconciliation. Thirst is a great leveller. By the time the refreshed Puffin had penetrated half-way down his glass, the Major found it impossible to be proud and proper any longer. He hated saying he was sorry (no man more) and he wouldn't have been sorry if he had been able to get a drink. He twirled his moustache a great many times and cleared his throat--it wanted more than that to clear it--and capitulated. "Upon my word, Puffin, I'm ashamed of myself for--ha!--for not taking my defeat better," he said. "A man's no business to let a game ruffle him." Puffin gave his alto cackling laugh. "Oh, that's all right, Major," he said. "I know it's awfully hard to lose like a gentleman." He let this sink in, then added: "Have a drink, old chap?" Major Flint flew to his feet. "Well, thank ye, thank ye," he said. "Now where's that soda water you offered me just now?" he shouted to the steward. The speed and completeness of the reconciliation was in no way remarkable, for when two men quarrel whenever they meet, it follows that they make it up again with corresponding frequency, else there could be no fresh quarrels at all. This one had been a shade more acute than most, and the drop into amity again was a shade more precipitous.

His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind. And, upon the whole, our intimacy was rather a mutual predilection than a deep and solid friendship, such as has since arisen between myself and you, Halford, whom, in spit of your occasional crustiness, I can liken to nothing so well as an old coat, unimpeachable in texture, but easy and loose - that has conformed itself to the shape of the wearer, and which he may use as he pleases, without being bothered with the fear of spoiling it; whereas Mr. Lawrence was like a new garment, all very neat and trim to look at, but so tight in the elbows that you would fear to split the seams by the unrestricted motion of your arms, and so smooth and fine in surface that you scruple to expose it to a single drop of rain.

My locker. The card is still there, a white patch of hope with my name on it. I tear it off and open it. Something falls to my feet. The card has a picture of two cutesy teddy bears sharing a pot of honey. I open it. 'Thanks for understanding. You're the sweetest!' It was signed with a purple pen. 'Good Luck!!! Heather.' I bend down to find what dropped from the card. It was the friendship necklace I had given Heather in a fit of insanity around Christmas. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How stupid could I be? I hear a crackling inside me, my ribs are collapsing in on my lungs, which is why I can't breathe. I stumble down the hall, down another hall, down another hall, till I find my very own door and slip inside and throw the lock, not even bothering to turn on the lights, just falling falling a mile downhill to the bottom of my brown chair, where I can ink my teeth into the soft white skin of my wrist and cry like the baby I am. I rock, thumping my head against the cinder-block wall. A half-forgotten holiday has unveiled every knife that sticks inside me, every cut. No Rachel, no Heather, not even a silly, geeky boy who would like the inside girl I think I am.

For a second he thought she might chuckle, and honest to God he didn't know what he would do if she did. "Grey, society didn't give you that scar. A woman you treated with no more regard than your dirty stockings gave you that scar. You cannot blame the actions of one on so many." HIs fingers tightened into fists at his side. "I do not blame all of society for her actions, of course not." "How could you? You don't even know who it was, do you?" "No." But he had suspicions. He was almost completely certain it had been Maggie-Lady Devane. He'd broken her heart the worst of them all. "Of course you don't." Suddenly her eyes were very dark and hard. "I suspect it could be one of a large list of names, all women who you toyed with and cast aside." A heavy chill settled over Grey's chest at the note of censure, and disapproval in her tone. He had known this day would come, when she would see him for what he truly was. He just hadn't expected it quite so soon. "Yes," he whispered. "A long list indeed." "So it's no wonder you would rather avoid society. I would too if I had no idea who my enemies were. It's certainly preferable to apologizing to every conquest and hope that you got the right one." She didn't say it meanly, or even mockingly, but there was definitely an edge to her husky voice. "Is this what we've come to, Rose?" he demanded. "You've added your name to the list of the women I've wronged?" She laughed then, knocking him even more off guard. "Of course not. I knew what I was getting myself into when I hatched such a foolhardy plan. No, your conscience need not bear the weight of me, grey." When she moved to stand directly before him, just inches away, it was all he could do to stand his ground and not prove himself a coward. Her hand touched his face, the slick satin of her gloves soft against his cheek. "I wish you would stop living under all this regret and rejoin the world," she told him in a tone laden with sorrow. "You have so much to offer it. I'm sure society would agree with me if you took the chance." Before he could engineer a reply, there was another knock at the door. Rose dropped her hand just as her mother stuck her head into the room. "Ah, there you are. Good evening, Grey. Rose, Lord Archer is here." Rose smiled. "I'll be right there, Mama." When the door closed once more, she turned to Grey. "Let us put an end to this disagreeable conversation and put it in the past where it belongs. Friends?" Grey looked down at her hand, extended like a man's. He didn't want to take it. In fact, he wanted to tell her what she could do with her offer of friendship and barely veiled insults. He wanted to crush her against his chest and kiss her until her knees buckled and her superior attitude melted away to pleas of passion. That was what he wanted.

My Little Pony Game Helps You Get A Creator With My Little Pony games, you can enjoy many categories such as Dress Up games, Makeover games, riding games, racing games,...Each game brings you the different sentiments and it depends on your hobby that you can choose the suitable game for your free time. At our website, there are many My Little Pony games with full My Little Pony characters and you can meet them such as Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and Applejack,,They have the good friendship and relations as well. Now, you will go to our new game called My little pony hairstyle. This is a creator game for you that you can get an opportunity to make new hair for Rainbow Dash. As you know, she has a hairstyle attached to her name. Now, you will help her to change Little about her hairstyle. Not difficult to play this game , you just use your mouse and follow step by step instruction that you can find in this game at our website. I can tell more here to help you play this game easier. In the first game, you will choose a hairstyle in six styles. Then you will choose the color for her hair. You can take one in ten colors in this game such as blue, green, red, purple, yellow, light purple,.. And you mix color as your favorite color. With each my little pony character, you can see the different personality and fashion style. My little pony Rainbow Dash has always the unique hairstyle with the mixing color. This is the creator game because you can show your fashion style about the hair. Besides the dress up game and make up games, we have others games categories such as riding, racing, caring, cooking, fighting,,,All are free here, you can enjoy them at anytime and anywhere. Please recommend our website to your friends as well, you will have the more human counterpart. You will have the good experience, adventure when you come to our website. We provide also descendants games, Elsa games, Daby games, Io games,...It depends on the age, the hobby that you can choose the game in your free time. You can enjoy the life as a child with our games and forget all the worries and stress in your life. I hope that you will like our games as well. My Little Pony Angry is a puzzle game and your task in this game is to use your mouse to drag and drop the pieces and make a complete My Little Pony pictures. In this game, you will get an opportunity to meet again six main My Little Pony such as Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Twilight Sparkle of the cartoon My Little Pony, they are all very aggressive and angry. We think that this way they want to scare off enemies from Ponyville. You know that My Little Pony or Friendship Is Magic has the content that tells about six main My Little Pony and other supporting characters but with My Little Pony, the content focuses primarily on Twilight Sparkle and her friends, they find out the way to rescue Equestria Land. Each My Little Pony game can give you a good lessons about family, friends, relationship...This is a cheap entertainment and designed for everyone. I hope that you can get the perfectime here and we can make the relationship thank to My Little Pony games on our website. Have fun on our site Gamesmylittlepony.com

She was interviewing one of my favorite television actors, Don Johnson of Miami Vice. As he reclined on a couch in his lovely home, Don told Barbara about the joys and difficulties in his life. He talked of past struggles with drug and alcohol abuse and work addiction. Then he spoke of his relationships with women—how exciting and attractive he found them. I could see his energy rise and his breath quicken as he spoke. An air of intoxication seemed to fill the room. Don said his problem was he liked women too much and found it hard to be with one special partner over a long period. He would develop a deep friendship and intimacy, but then his eyes would wander. I thought to myself, this man has been sexually abused! His problems sounded identical to those of adult survivors I counsel in my practice. But then I reconsidered: Maybe I’ve been working too hard. Perhaps I’m imagining a sexual abuse history that isn’t really there. Then it happened. Barbara leaned forward and, with a smile, asked, “Don, is it true that you had your first sexual relationship when you were quite young, about twelve years old, with your seventeen-year-old baby-sitter?” My jaw dropped. Don grinned back at Barbara. He cocked his head to the side; a twinkle came into his blue eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “and I still get excited just thinking about her today.” Barbara showed no alarm. The next day I wrote Barbara Walters a letter, hoping to enlighten her about the sexual abuse of boys. Had Don been a twelve-year-old girl and the baby-sitter a seventeen-year-old boy, we wouldn’t hesitate to call what had happened rape. It would make no difference how cooperative or seemingly “willing” the victim had been. The sexual contact was exploitive and premature, and would have been whether the twelve-year-old was a boy or a girl. This past experience and perhaps others like it may very well be at the root of the troubles Don Johnson has had with long-term intimacy. Don wasn’t “lucky to get a piece of it early,” as some people might think. He was sexually abused and hadn’t yet realized it.   Acknowledging past sexual abuse is an important step in sexual healing. It helps us make a connection between our present sexual issues and their original source. Some survivors have little difficulty with this step: They already see themselves as survivors and their sexual issues as having stemmed directly from sexual abuse. A woman who is raped sees an obvious connection if she suddenly goes from having a pleasurable sex life to being terrified of sex. For many survivors, however, acknowledging sexual abuse is a difficult step. We may recall events, but through lack of understanding about sexual abuse may never have labeled those experiences as sexual abuse. We may have dismissed experiences we had as insignificant. We may have little or no memory of past abuse. And we may have difficulty fully acknowledging to ourselves and to others that we were victims. It took me years to realize and admit that I had been raped on a date, even though I knew what had happened and how I felt about it. I needed to understand this was in fact rape and that I had been a victim. I needed to remember more and to stop blaming myself before I was able to acknowledge my experience as sexual abuse.

She's my mother. How do you say no to family?" Marie gets a dark look on her face. "There's a difference between relatives and family. You can be related to someone; that is an accident of genetics. Relatives are pure biology. But family is action. Family is attitude. That woman..." Marie's voice drips with venom. "Is NOT your family. WE are your family. That woman is just your relative." Hedy's mouth drops, and Caroline's eyes fly open so wide I think they might get stuck. "Don't hold back there, Marie," Hedy says, finding her voice. "I'm sorry, but..." Marie's eyes fill with tears. "Oh no!" Caroline leans over and takes Marie's hand. Marie shakes it off. "I hate her. I hate that she had the best daughter on the planet and never appreciated her and wasn't ever there for her and never once did anything for her. You guys don't know. She was the most self-absorbed narcissistic cold person..." "She gave me Joe." "But..." she says. I raise my hand. "She. Gave. Me. JOE. Whatever other bullshit happened, the most important thing in my life growing up was Joe. He made me who I am, he helped me find my calling, he was a gift, and everything else is just beyond my ability to get upset about." "You could get a little upset," Caroline says. "It takes nothing away from Joe, and how important he was to you, to acknowledge that your mother failed you in almost every way," Hedy says. "I think you should tell her to go fuck herself," Marie says, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms like a petulant child. I don't know that I've ever seen her so furious. "You guys don't get it, I was THERE. I MET HER. Wanna know how she screws in a lightbulb? Holds it up in the air and lets the universe just revolve around her." This makes the three of us bust out laughing. "Oh, Marie, I love you. Thank you for being so on my side." It does mean the world to me that my oldest friend is so protective.

It wasn't only my friends who suffered from female rivalry. I remember when I was just sixteen years old, during spring vacation, being whisked off to an early lunch by my best friend's brother, only to discover, to my astonishment and hurt, that she was expecting some college boys to drop by and didn't want me there to compete with her. When I started college at Sarah Lawrence, I soon noticed that while some of my classmates were indeed true friends, others seemed to resent that I had a boyfriend. It didn't help that Sarah Lawrence, a former girls' school, included very few straight men among its student body--an early lesson in how competing for items in short supply often brings out the worst in women. In graduate school, the stakes got higher, and the competition got stiffer, a trend that continued when I went on to vie for a limited number of academic jobs. I always had friends and colleagues with whom I could have trusted my life--but I also found women who seemed to view not only me but all other female academics as their rivals. This sense of rivalry became more painful when I divorced my first husband. Many of my friends I depended on for comfort and support suddenly began to view me as a threat. Some took me out to lunch to get the dirt, then dropped me soon after. I think they found it disturbing that I left my unhappy marriage while they were still committed to theirs. For other women, the threat seemed more immediate--twice I was told in no uncertain terms that I had better stay away from someone's husband, despite my protests that I would no more go after a friend's husband than I would stay friends with a woman who went after mine. Thankfully, I also had some true friends who remained loyal and supportive during one of the most difficult times of my life. To this day I trust them implicitly, with the kind of faith you reserve for people who have proved themselves under fire. But I've also never forgotten the shock and disappointment of discovering how quickly those other friendships turned to rivalries.

After dinner Karamenaios would drop in. We had about fifty words with which to make lingual currency. We didn't even need that many, as I soon discovered. There are a thousand ways of talking and words don't help if the spirit is absent. Karamenaios and I were eager to talk. lt made little difference to me whether we talked about the war or about knives and forks. Sometimes we discovered that a word or phrase which we had been using for days, he in English or I in Greek, meant something entirely different than we had thought it to mean. It made no difference. We understood one another even with the wrong words. I could learn five new words in an evening and forget six or eight during my sleep. The important thing was the warm handclasp, the light in the eyes, the grapes which we devoured in common, the glass we raised to our lips in sign of friendship. Now and then I would get excited and, using a melange of English, Greek, German, French, Choctaw, Eskimo, Swahili or any other tongue I felt would serve the purpose, using the chair, the table, the spoon, the lamp, the bread knife, I would enact for him a fragment of my life in New York, Paris, London, Chula Vista, Canarsie, Hackensack or in some place I had never been or some place I had been in a dream or when lying asleep on the operating table. Sometimes I felt so good, so versatile and acrobatic, that I would stand on the table and sing in some unknown language or hop from the table to the commode and from the commode to the staircase or swing from the rafters, anything to entertain him, keep him amused, make him roll from side to side with laughter. I was considered an old man in the village because of my bald pate and fringe of white hair. Nobody had ever seen an old man cut up the way I did. "The old man is going for a swim," they would say. "The old man is taking the boat out." Always "the old man." If a storm came up and they knew I was out in the middle of the pond they would send someone out to see that "the old man" got in safely. If I decided to take a jaunt through the hills Karamenaios would offer to accompany me so that no harm would come to me. If I got stranded somewhere I had only to announce that I was an American and at once a dozen hands were ready to help me.

Liberty is poorly served by men whose good intent is quelled from one failure or two failures or any number of failures, or from the casual indifference or ingratitude of the people, or from the sharp show of the tushes of power, or the bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or any penal statutes. Liberty relies upon itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, and knows no discouragement. The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat…the enemy triumphs…the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote and leadballs do their work…the cause is asleep…the strong throats are choked with their own blood…the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other…and is liberty gone out of that place? No never. When liberty goes it is not the first to go nor the second or third to go…it waits for all the rest to go…it is the last…When the memories of the old martyrs are faded utterly away…when the large names of patriots are laughed at in the public halls from the lips of the orators…when the boys are no more christened after the same but christened after tyrants and traitors instead…when the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted and laws for informers and bloodmoney are sweet to the taste of the people…when I and you walk abroad upon the earth stung with compassion at the sight of numberless brothers answering our equal friendship and calling no man master—and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves…when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night and surveys its experience and has much extasy over the word and deed that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel inferiority…when those in all parts of these states who could easier realize the true American character but do not yet—when the swarms of cringers, suckers, dough-faces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get the offices or no…when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart…and when servility by town or state or the federal government or any oppression on a large scale or small scale can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the smallest chance of escape…or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth—then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth.