Fragile Friendship Quotes

She was my friend and I loved her and relied on her, even though there were days when her moodiness and fragility frightened me, because they reminded me of my own tenuous grasp on life.

Jem’s eyes had widened, and then he’d laughed, a soft laugh. “Did you think I did not know you had a secret?” he’d said. “Did you think I walked into my friendship with you with my eyes shut? I did not know the nature of the burden you carried. But I knew there was a burden.” He’d stood up. “I knew you thought yourself poison to all those around you,” he’d added. “I knew you thought there to be some corruptive force about you that would break me. I meant to show you that I would not break, that love was not so fragile. Did I do that?

I think the purest of souls, those with the most fragile of hearts, must be meant for a short life. They can't be tethered or held in your palm. Just like a sparrow, they light on your porch. Their song might be brief, but how greedy would we be to ask for more? No, you cannot keep a sparrow. You can only hope that as they fly away, they take a little bit of you with them.

If you love somebody, tell them. If there is conflict, let it go and fight instead for peace. Break the numb false silence and break the distance too. Laugh and cry and apologize and start again. This life is short and fragile but friendship is among the greatest miracles.

[That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken. The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached, that in his heart Alai was glad of the separation, and was ready to be Ender's enemy. For now that they could not be together, they must be infinitely apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other.

Severing our young and fragile friendship was a sad ordeal, but sadder still was the fact that this friend found it so difficult to respond to my immediate need, unlike a dreamed boy who always afforded me easy comfort. I couldn’t understand what was so hard about reaching out to hug someone. But judging by Gregory’s uncomfortable conduct I had to assume it was an honest trial.

True friends define each other.

And though later he came pretending friendship, the alliance with man would ever be but fragile, for the fear he’d struck into their hearts was too deep to be dislodged.

A lot of ink is given over to mythologizing female friendships as curious, fragile relationships that are always intensely fraught. Stop reading writing that encourages this mythology.

Parents don’t get that, though. They don’t understand about the fragility of teen friendships. They don’t understand how easy it is for things to break apart, how someone you thought would be by your side forever can just disappear, or turn on you, or decide she likes someone more than she likes you. Parents always talk about romantic relationships being so ephemeral and fleeting in high school. What they don’t get is that friendships can be the same way.

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.

The most profound message of racial segregation may be that the absence of people of color from our lives is no real loss. Not one person who loved me, guided me, or taught me ever conveyed that segregation deprived me of anything of value. I could live my entire life without a friend or loved one of color and not see that as a diminishment of my life. In fact, my life trajectory would almost certainly ensure that I had few, if any, people of color in my life. I might meet a few people of color if I played certain sports in school, or if there happened to be one or two persons of color in my class, but when I was outside of that context, I had no proximity to people of color, much less any authentic relationships. Most whites who recall having a friend of color in childhood rarely keep these friendships into adulthood. Yet if my parents had thought it was valuable to have cross-racial relationships, they would have ensured that I had them, even if it took effort—the same effort so many white parents expend to send their children across town so they can attend a better (whiter) school. Pause for a moment and consider the profundity of this message: we are taught that we lose nothing of value through racial segregation. Consider the message we send to our children—as well as to children of color—when we describe white segregation as good.

Shapes began to appear in the mist as it thickened. Clary saw herself and Simon as children, holding hands, crossing a street in Brooklyn,; she had barrettes in her hair and Simon was adorably rumpled, his glasses sliding off his nose. There they were again, throwing snowballs in Prospect Park; and at Luke's farmhouse, tanned from summer, hanging upside down from tree branches. She saw them in Java Jones, listening to Eric's terrible poetry, and on the back of a flying motorcycle as it crashed into a parking lot, with Jace there, looking at them, his eyes squinted against the sun. And there was Simon with Isabelle, his hands curved around her face, kissing her, and she could see Isabelle as Simon saw her: fragile and strong, and so, so beautiful. And there was Valentine's ship, Simon kneeling on Jace, blood on his mouth and shirt, and blood at Jace's throat, and there was the cell in Idris, and Hodge's weathered face, and Simon and Clary again, Clary etching the Mark of Cain onto his forehead. Maureen, and her blood on the floor, and her little pink hat, and the rooftop in Manhattan where Lilith had raised Sebastian, and Clary was passing him a gold ring across a table, and an Angel was rising out of a lake before him and he was kissing Isabelle...

And they lived happily ever after” is one of the most tragic sentences in literature. It is tragic because it tells a falsehood about life and has led countless generations of people to expect something from human existence which is not possible on this fragile, imperfect earth. The “happy ending” obsession of Western culture is both a romantic illusions and a psychological handicap. It can never be literally true that love and marriage are unblemished perfections, for any worthwhile life has its trials, its disappointments, and its burning heartaches. Yet who can compare the numbers of people who have unconsciously absorbed this “and they lived happily ever after” illusion in their childhood and have thereafter been disappointed when life has not come up to their expectations and who secretly suffer from the jealous conviction that other married people know a kind of bliss that is denied them..Life is not paradise. It is pain, hardship, and temptation shot through with radiant gleams of light, friendship and love.

It’s knowing the world might be a trash fire, but it’s less trash when there are people to help navigate the darkness. Friendship is messy. Hard. Infuriating. Awesome. Fragile. Durable. Impossible. Worth it. Always worth it.

How shallow is the stage on which this vast drama of human hates and joys and friendships is played! Whence do men draw this passion for eternity, flung by chance as they are upon a scarcely cooled bed of lava, threatened by the beginning by the deserts that are to be, under the constant menace of the snows? Their civilizations are but fragile gildings: a volcano can blot them out, a new sea, a sand-storm.

It was in America that horses first roamed. A million years before the birth of man, they grazed the vast plains of wiry grass and crossed to other continents over bridges of rock soon severed by retreating ice. They first knew man as the hunted knows the hunter, for long before he saw them as a means to killing other beasts, man killed them for their meat. Paintings on the walls of caves showed how. Lions and bears would turn and fight and that was the moment men speared them. But the horse was a creature of flight not fight and, with a simple deadly logic, the hunter used flight to destroy it. Whole herds were driven hurtling headlong to their deaths from the tops of cliffs. Deposits of their broken bones bore testimony. And though later he came pretending friendship, the alliance with man would ever be but fragile, for the fear he'd struck into their hearts was too deep to be dislodged. Since that neolithic moment when first a horse was haltered, there were those among men who understood this. They could see into the creature's soul and soothe the wounds they found there. Often they were seen as witches and perhaps they were. Some wrought their magic with the bleached bones of toads, plucked from moonlit streams. Others, it was said, could with but a glance root the hooves of a working team to the earth they plowed. There were gypsies and showmen, shamans and charlatans. And those who truly had the gift were wont to guard it wisely, for it was said that he who drove the devil out, might also drive him in. The owner of a horse you calmed might shake your hand then dance around the flames while they burned you in the village square. For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubles ears, these men were known as Whisperers.

He was thinking of the irony of friendship—so strong it is, and so fragile. We fly together, like straws in an eddy, to part in the open stream.

I had eventually come to understand that friendship was a delicate, gradual process that mustn’t be rushed or seized upon but allowed and encouraged to take its course over time. I pictured it as a butterfly, simultaneously beautiful and fragile, that once afloat belonged to the air and any attempt to grab at it would only destroy it.

Here again, the difference between the effective and the virtual, between mourning and its possibility, seems fragile and porous. The anguished apprehension of mourning (without which the act of friendship would not spring forth in its very energy) insinuates itself a priori and anticipates itself; it haunts and plunges the friend, before mourning, into mourning. This apprehension weeps before the lamentation, it weeps death before death, and this is the very respiration of friendship, the extreme of its possibility. Hence surviving is at once the essence, the origin and the possibility, the condition of possibility of friendship; it is the grieved act of loving. This time of surviving thus gives the time of friendship.

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.

The fragility of mortals bred kindness and good grace. They knew how to value friendship and an open hand.

Friendships are fragile and must be protected, because once broken, they can’t always be fixed.

But love wasn't a spell, some kind of benediction to be whispered, a balm or a cure-all. It was a single, fragile thread, which grew stronger through connection, through shared hardship and honored trust.

My friendships, and I use that term loosely, were fleeting and fragile and often painful, with people who generally wanted something from me and were gone as soon as they got that something. I was so lonely I was willing to tolerate these relationships. The faint resemblance of human connection was enough. It had to be enough even though it wasn’t.

Those were the best nights of my life. I couldn’t say why, exactly, this was so—only that I knew that as an old woman, when I thought back to my youth, I’d remember these nights, sitting with these five people along the harrowing window ledge of the Foreman’s Lookout, gazing into that clear blue lake hundreds of feet below. Our friendship was born there. There we were bound together. Something about seeing each other against that spare, alien backdrop of rock, water, and sky—not to mention the prohibited, dangerous thing we were doing—it X-rayed us, revealed the unspoken questions we each were asking. You could feel life burning us, our scars as real as the wind whipping our faces. We knew that nothing would ever be the same, that youth was here and nearly gone already, that love was fragile and death was real.

For love is greater than any wind of words. And man, leaning at his window under the stars, is once again responsible for the bread of the day to come, for the slumber of the wife who lies by his side, all fragile and delicate and contingent. Love is not thinking, but being. As I sat facing Alias I longed for night, when my thoughts would be of civilization, of the destiny of man, of the savor of friendship in my native land. For night, so that I might yearn to serve some overwhelming purpose which at this moment I cannot define. For night, so that I might perhaps advance a step towards fixing my unmanageable language. I longed for the night as the poet might do, the true poet who feels himself inhabited by a thing obscure but powerful, and who strives to erect images like ramparts round that thing in order to capture it. To capture it in a snare of images.

Xander saw him to the door. It wasn’t awkward per se, but it was a…charged goodbye. They were both aware everything had changed. That they’d cracked into something good, but scary. Fragile. Something to be treated with care. He vowed to not mess this friendship up, to not muddy it or screw with it in any way.

You are full of cruelty and mockery,” Kami said. “My heart breaks to think of the day I entrusted you with the fragile flower of my girlish friendship.

The eyes of friends are so penetrating That they can disrobe The deepest secrets Hidden so well In the innermost chamber Of your steel heart.

Trust is a fragile thing. All it takes is a single moment in time, or a single word, to destroy what took a lifetime to build.

You're the strongest woman I know. And I know some of the strongest women in the state. He spoke with a conviction that left no room for argument. He believed what he was saying. But I've learned from the men who love those women. I know when a strong, determined woman gives her heart to a man, it's his responsibility to cherish and protect it because he's the only one who knows how fragile that heart really is.

Don't let your focus be so much on how many times you go on a date but how you can build into one another, share and carry each other's vision, complement each other, develop a deeper level of friendship; grow spiritually together and make the little things meaningful. It's beyond the 100% but more about how committed and dedicated you are daily. Love can only truly exist, when you become selfless and focus less on what is in it for you.

He was thinking of the irony of friendship — so strong it is, and so fragile. We fly together, like straws in an eddy, to part in the open stream. Nature has no use for us: she has cut her stuff differently. Dutiful sons, loving husbands, responsible fathers these are what she wants, and if we are friends it must be in our spare time. Abram and Sarai were sorrowful, yet their seed became as sand of the sea, and distracts the politics of Europe at this moment. But a few verses of poetry is all that survives of David and Jonathan.

Friendships outlive marriages and family. Friendships can make a life wonderful or wasted, worth sacrificing or worth saving. In the Paris-based 7-book Apricot Tree House Mystery Series, Jamie Litton and Ben Foulof choose to save each other because they have learned that friendship is that fragile thread tethering all of us between Heaven and Earth.

SOUL SPRING Everything visible has an invisible archetype. Forms wear down and die. No matter. The original and the origin do not. Every fragile beauty, every perfect forgotten sentence, you grieve their going away, but that is not how it is. Where they come from never goes dry. It is an always flowing spring. Imagine soul as a fountain, a source, and these visible forms as rivers that build from an aquifer that is an infinite water. The moment you come into being here a ladder, a means of escape, is set up. First, you are mineral, then plant, then animal. This much is obvious, surely. You go on to be a human developing reason and subtle intuitions. Look at your body, what an intricate beauty it has grown to be in this dustpit. And you have yet more traveling to do, the move into spirit, where eventually you will be done with this earthplace. There is an ocean where your drop becomes a hundred Indian Oceans. Where Son becomes One. Be sure of two things. The body grows old, and your soul stays fresh and young.

I want to return to the theme of pleasure and the epicurean life. For centuries, Epicurus's philosophy of pleasure has been repudiated by moralists, but occasionally his central themes break through and are given at least momentary consideration—sensuality, pleasure, friendship, moderation—I think he has been neglected, because there is so much soul in his philosophy, and it is not insignificant that his classes were held in an Athenian garden, a place where the soul is most at home. The garden of Epicurus invites us to reflect on the epicurean aspects of gardens, especially the sensual pleasures they provide. In a disenchanted world, it's important to get somewhere and accomplish something, but the time spent in a garden gets us nowhere....The garden reconciles human art and wild nature, hard work and deep pleasure, spiritual practice and the material world. It is a magical place because it is not divided. The many divisions and polarizations that terrorize a disenchanted world find peaceful accord among mossy rock walls, rough stone paths, and trimmed bushes. Maybe a garden sometimes seems fragile, for all its earth and labor, because it achieves such an extraordinary balance of nature and human life, naturalness and artificiality. It has its own liminality, its point of balance between great extremes.

There is no solution for Europe other than deepening the democratic values it invented. It does not need a geographical extension, absurdly drawn out to the ends of the Earth; what it needs is an intensification of its soul, a condensation of its strengths. It is one of the rare places on this planet where something absolutely unprecedented is happening, without its people even knowing it, so much do they take miracles for granted. Beyond imprecation and apology, we have to express our delighted amazement that we live on this continent and not another. Europe, the planet's moral compass, has sobered up after the intoxication of conquest and has acquired a sense of the fragility of human affairs. It has to rediscover its civilizing capabilities, not recover its taste for blood and carnage, chiefly for spiritual advances. But the spirit of penitence must not smother the spirit of resistance. Europe must cherish freedom as its most precious possession and teach it to schoolchildren. It must also celebrate the beauty of discord and divest itself of its sick allergy to confrontation, not be afraid to point out the enemy, and combine firmness with regard to governments and generosity with regard to peoples. In short, it must simply reconnect with the subversive richness of its ideas and the vitality of its founding principles. Naturally, we will continue to speak the double language of fidelity and rupture, to oscillate between being a prosecutor and a defense lawyer. That is our mental hygiene: we are forced to be both the knife and the wound, the blade that cuts and the hand that heals. The first duty of a democracy is not to ruminate on old evils, it is to relentlessly denounce its present crimes and failures. This requires reciprocity, with everyone applying the same rule. We must have done with the blackmail of culpability, cease to sacrifice ourselves to our persecutors. A policy of friendship cannot be founded on the false principle: we take the opprobrium, you take the forgiveness. Once we have recognized any faults we have, then the prosecution must turn against the accusers and subject them to constant criticism as well. Let us cease to confuse the necessary evaluation of ourselves with moralizing masochism. There comes a time when remorse becomes a second offence that adds to the first without cancelling it. Let us inject in others a poison that has long gnawed away at us: shame. A little guilty conscience in Tehran, Riyadh, Karachi, Moscow, Beijing, Havana, Caracas, Algiers, Damascus, Yangon, Harare, and Khartoum, to mention them alone, would do these governments, and especially their people, a lot of good. The fines gift Europe could give the world would be to offer it the spirit of critical examination that it has conceived and that has saved it from so many perils. It is a poisoned gift, but one that is indispensable for the survival of humanity.

The connection to the Friend is secret and very fragile. The image of the Friendship is in how you love, the grace and the delicacy, the subtle talking together in full prostration, outside of time. When you are there, remember the fierce courtesy of the one with you.

Leah's words waltz across the fragile space between us with an endearing choreography.

Those that form the nucleus of our friendships and family bonds, at any given point in our lives, do not necessarily remain with us through time. There may be a variety of reasons for this. The relationships themselves may be fragile or their world may only ever have been intended to collide with ours for a short span of time. Ambition and love draw people in different directions, work lives can create nomadic pathways and loves journeys can take us on geographically diverse paths. Death may also arrive to cause its ultimate diversion or, as so often is the case these days, our mental health may become mental illness.

The little boy touched his dust-streaked hand to Loretta’s hair and made a breathless “ooh” sound. He smelled like any little boy who had been hard at play, a bit sweaty yet somehow sweet, with the definite odor of dog and horse clinging to him. Blackbird concentrated on Loretta’s blue eyes, staring into them with unflinching intensity. The younger girl ran reverent fingertips over the flounces on Loretta’s bloomers, saying, “Tosi wannup,” over and over again. Loretta couldn’t help but smile. She was as strange to them as they were to her. She longed to gather them close and never let go. Friendly faces and human warmth. Their giggles made her long for home. With a throat that responded none too well to the messages from her brain, Loretta murmured, “Hello.” The sound of her own voice seemed unreal--an echo from the past. “Hi, hites.” Blackbird linked her chubby forefingers in an unmistakable sign of friendship. “Hah-ich-ka sooe ein conic?” Loretta had no idea what the child had asked until Blackbird steepled her fingers. “Oh--my house?” Loretta cupped a hand over her brow as if she were squinting into the distance. “Very far away.” Blackbird’s eyes sparkled with delight, and she burst into a long chain of gibberish, chortling and waving her hands. Loretta watched her, fascinated by the glow of happiness in her eyes, the innocence in her small face. She had always imagined Comanches, young and old, with blood dripping from their fingers. A deep voice came from behind her. “She asks how long you will eat and keep warm with us.” Startled, Loretta glanced over her shoulder to find Hunter reclining on a pallet of furs. Because he lay so low to the floor, she hadn’t seen him the first time she’d looked. Propping himself up on one elbow, he listened to his niece chatter for a moment. His eyes caught the light coming through the lodge door, glistening, fathomless. “You will tell her, ‘Pihet tabbe.’” Trust didn’t come easily to Loretta. “What does that mean?” A smile teased the corners of his mouth. “Pihet, three. Tabbe, the sun. Three suns. It was our bargain.” Relieved that she hadn’t dreamed his promise to take her home, Loretta repeated “pihet tabbe” to Blackbird. The little girl looked crestfallen and took Loretta’s hand. “Ka,” she cried. “Ein mea mon-ach.” “Ka, no. You are going a long way,” Hunter translated, pushing to his feet as he spoke. “I think she likes you.” He came to the bed and, with an indulgent smile, shooed the children away as Aunt Rachel shooed chickens. “Poke Wy-ar-pee-cha, Pony Girl,” he said as he scooped the unintimidated toddler off the furs and set her on the floor. His hand lingered a moment on her hair, a loving gesture that struck Loretta as totally out of character for a Comanche warrior. The fragile child, his rugged strength. The two formed a fascinating contrast. “She is from my sister who is dead.” Nodding toward the boy, he added, “Wakare-ee, Turtle, from Warrior.” Loretta didn’t want the children to leave her alone with their uncle. She gazed after them as they ran out the lodge door.

We were the last two people in the world who believed he would come back. […] We knew that Armin was alive. That knowledge connected us much more than a shared desk did, it was important to stay together until the end, until your brother showed up again. If we fought, if we split up, that fragile conviction would come undone too. As if his whole life had been woven into the fabric of our friendship. He was to be found nowhere else but there.]

Because I love you, you idiot!’ The sentence hangs in the air. It’s taken us both by surprise. We blink at each other, take a breath. I feel the flush climb my neck, check that I mean it. I do. Not just for who he’s been for the past two weeks, but for our friendship before that. Before we screwed everything up. ‘No you don’t,’ Rafa says. But the guilt and frustration are gone, replaced by something more fragile. ‘Don’t tell me what I do and don’t feel, Rafa.’ He watches me, unreadable. The seconds stretch out. ‘Then say it again.’ I look him the eye. They’re difficult words because they strip me bare. ‘I love you. You idiot.’ Rafa doesn’t speak and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. This quiet intensity is something new. I close the distance until I’m standing between his legs. I don’t touch him. ‘That’s not easy for me to say.’ ‘Because it’s me?’ ‘Because I’ve never said it before, and because I mean it. Rafa, the way I felt about you a few hours ago . . . that hasn’t changed. If I’d told you then, would you have believed it?’ His eyes soften at the memory. ‘Then believe it now.’ I press my hand to his chest, feel his heart thump against my palm through his t-shirt. ‘Do you want to add anything, or am I out on this limb alone?’ He guides me closer, his fingers light on my hips. ‘How I feel about you scares the hell out of me. I’ve got no counter-moves. No defence. And now you remember everything, I’ve lost the upper hand.’ ‘You had the upper hand?’ A short laugh. ‘Apparently not.

Entitled people adopt these strategies in their relationships, as with everything, to help avoid accepting responsibility for their own problems. As a result, their relationships are fragile and fake, products of avoiding inner pain rather than embracing a genuine appreciation and adoration of their partner. This goes not just for romantic relationships, by the way, but also for family relationships and friendships. An overbearing mother may take responsibility for every problem in her children’s lives. Her own entitlement then encourages an entitlement in her children, as they grow up to believe other people should always be responsible for their problems. (This is why the problems in your romantic relationships always eerily resemble the problems in your parents’ relationship.)

In general, entitled people fall into one of two traps in their relationships. Either they expect other people to take responsibility for their problems: “I wanted a nice relaxing weekend at home. You should have known that and canceled your plans.” Or they take on too much responsibility for other people’s problems: “She just lost her job again, but it’s probably my fault because I wasn’t as supportive of her as I could have been. I’m going to help her rewrite her résumé tomorrow.” Entitled people adopt these strategies in their relationships, as with everything, to help avoid accepting responsibility for their own problems. As a result, their relationships are fragile and fake, products of avoiding inner pain rather than embracing a genuine appreciation and adoration of their partner. This goes not just for romantic relationships, by the way, but also for family relationships and friendships. An overbearing mother may take responsibility for every problem in her children’s lives. Her own entitlement then encourages an entitlement in her children, as they grow up to believe other people should always be responsible for their problems.

The power of kings is transitory, like everything else. Royal glory is difficult to climb, like a bamboo; it is hard to hold, being fidgety like a monkey on a treetop; it is balanced precariously, like drops of water on a lotus-leaf; it is changeable, like the path of the wind; it is undependable, like the friendship of a dishonest man; it is difficult to tame, like a serpent; it glistens only for a moment, like a cloud at sunset; it is fragile, like bubbles on the surface of a river; it is elusive, like the treasure attained in a dream. Remember all this, and enjoy your kingdom modestly.

It was the beginning of learning that I can't look to any one person to be my security blanket, and that my value goes deeper than one person's opinion of me. I learned that friendships are fragile and we need to handle them with respect and reverence.

Our friendship was like glass, fragile and irreplaceable. One moment of weakness … one mistake … and it might have shattered completely. Our friendship was worth too much to me to risk even the slightest crack.

Lucia couldn’t deny it. Cleo was getting to her, breaking through that dark wall that surrounded her. Believe in magic. Believe in the impossible. Believe, tentatively, in this fragile new friendship with Cleo. And believe that one day she’d see Alexius again.

I don’t do relationships with anyone. Not friendship, not more. Wouldn’t want to saddle a single soul with the fucked-up shit that’s me. But you keep looking at me with those kiss-me eyes, all green and sparking gold, and it’s killing me. Doesn’t matter how much I want to drown in your taste. How much I want to know what it would be like to sink into that sweet heat. I can’t. I won’t.

The chance to confront our mortality and admit to our fragility is the basis of all friendship.

When the ill wind blows into our life, it leaves a devastation emotional unbalance, it blows away all the things we though it was important but we realise they were not that important after all, but this moment in the eye of the storm, can leave us wrecked upon the shores of life, and yet this to shall pass, as all the other storms we faced in our life, that has come and gone through the years, it arrives in twos and threes, and our emotions are rattled and shaken like the leaves on the trees, this phenomena is not for the select few in the world, but it comes to us all, its called upon the invisible writings of life, as part of life, this storm in life can be found in Grieving, in Love, in disappointment, this invisible writing in the book of life, comes to us, in times of good times and bad times, it is the measure of life, its called living, its called experiencing, its called the invisible book of life that we all collectively experience one time or another, it is written in friendship, laughter a hope for tomorrow, we don’t know what pages in life this invisible writing will come and find us, or in what form, it can be happy or sad, depending on what is going on around you and how you react to everything around you, we are work in progress we are fragile, we are strong, sometimes we even feel invisible, everything passes as life itself passes, as we age and grow old, our thinking becomes more clear, to the events of life and the challenges of life, and we no longer have the desire to compete in the trivial things of competition in life to have this or that thinking it will make us happier, if your not happy in this blessed moment as who you are what you stand for and what you represent in life, if you had the whole wealth in the world this would not make you happy, Love is the power plant the transformer of life that lets you keep beauty grace and elegance intact, though the journey of life, from beginning to the end

Sometimes, relationships had the fragility of glass. Whatever kind it was, once it shattered, it could never be put back together—not even if one forgot…or even forgave.

For me, the epic {of Gilgamesh] is primarily about both the fragility and resilience of being human, and, also, it is about the possibility for change. Learning to care for others, not just yourself. Gilgamesh, let's admit, is an awful person in the beginning, and it is only through love and friendship and loss that he becomes more humble and gentle. So it is a story in which there is no hero in the traditional sense, and everything is either fractured or fluid -- like life itself.

In the silence, which was more reflective than uncomfortable, Nora felt a fragile connection with Hester and June. It was a feeling she recalled from her previous life—a tentative warmth that could be kindled into a real friendship.

cross-racial friendships do not block out the dynamics of racism in the society at large, and these dynamics continue unabated.

A delicate trace of a smile appeared on Passer’s face. Jan knew that smile well. it was not a joyous or an approving smile, but a smile of tolerance. They had always been far apart in their views, and in the rare moments when their differences became too visible, they would smile that smile to assure each other that their friendship was not in danger. 295 When things are repeated, they lose a fraction of their meaning. Or more exactly, they lose, drop by drop, the vital strength that gives them their illusory meaning. 295-6 It takes so little, a tiny puff of air, for things to shift imperceptibly, and whatever it was that a man was ready to lay down his life for a few seconds earlier seems suddenly to be sheer nonsense. 297 Whenever her mother-in-law had wanted something from them, she would weep. Weeping was her way of blaming them, and there was nothing more aggressive than her tears. 114 I calculate that two or three new fictional characters are baptized here on earth every second. 109 We shall flee rest, we shall flee sleep, We shall outrun dawn and spring And we shall shape days and seasons To the measure of our dreams. 94 All mysticism is excessive. The mystic must not be afraid of ridicule if he wants to go to the limits, the limits of humility or the limits of sensual pleasure. 80

Relationships to other people are glass: just as fragile as they are distorting and if you pay enough attention you can see yourself in them.

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.

In fact, racism invariably manifests itself within cross-racial friendships as well. Racism cannot be absent from your friendship. Few people of color whom I’ve met have said that racism isn’t at play in their friendships with white people. Some whites are more thoughtful, aware, and receptive to feedback than others, but no cross-racial relationship is free from the dynamics of racism in this society.

it occurs to her that their friendship exists in a perfect, fragile bubble of right now. If Josh was five percent less picky, he’d have a rebound girlfriend. If the fog of breakup failure wore off tomorrow…well, Ari probably wouldn’t be “dating” in the same way, but she’d be a functional human who wouldn’t need someone else to talk her to sleep over the phone several nights a week.

What does it mean, all these tiny actions, these hidden secrets, these fragile humans with their hardships and friendships and fuckships that survive the slog-sprint through time? Don't you all realize? We all end up dust.

It could be the start of a story or the end of one, Will thought, as they headed out together into the cold, dark street. It could be a farewell, or the foundation of a friendship. It could be an awkward drink in a crowded pub with an upper-class man wound tighter than a neurasthenic’s pocket watch, or just possibly something else entirely, something precious and fragile that Will didn’t want to look at straight on in case he jinxed it. It could be anything. He might as well find out what.

Trust is fragile. Yet, the forces that crush it are not. Therefore, the person who is willing to extend trust into an environment such as this must be fragile enough to understand the trust that they are giving, while strong enough to face the forces that seek to crush it. And it is this person who is not stymied by the shallowness of those who understand neither and therefore destroy both.

We have to keep on: build bridges, learn language, have babies, beat a stick against a rock and find rhythm. When death shows up, the fragility of all this is revealed. But not for long. Remembering the suck and force of death is like trying to hold water in your hand. What I took away from that dark alleyway was that, when it came to God, I needed not to know—needed the humble ignorance as to whether anything existed outside that grim tableau. In the months that followed, I kept thinking of the phrase “requisite mystery,” as though that could capture my necessary position in the universe now, poised on the line between Knowing and Not Knowing, between what seemed to me the arrogance of religious certainty and the despair of a godless world.

Cara’s not good with emotional stuff. She sort of shuts down or changes the subject instead. She’d probably abandon our friendship if she knew how fragile I feel right now and then I’d have no one. So I keep my sadness to myself. It’s private and it’s all mine.

Without institutional obligations, the upkeep of friendships require must be very deliberate... However, the weakness of friendship is also the source of its immeasurable strength. Why do true friendships make us happier than spouses or children? Because they're always a deliberate choice, never an obligation... Someone does not cease to be your parent, boss, or spouse because you stop liking them. Friendship is more real because either person can walk away at any time. Its fragility proves its purity.

No person of color whom I’ve met has said that racism isn’t at play in his or her friendships with white people. Some whites are more thoughtful, aware, and receptive to feedback than others, but no cross-racial relationship is free from the dynamics of racism in this society.

Most whites who recall having a friend of color in childhood rarely keep these friendships into adulthood. Yet if my parents had thought it was valuable to have cross-racial relationships, they would have ensured that I had them, even if it took effort—the same effort so many white parents expend to send their children across town so they can attend a better (whiter) school.

Segregation is often lessened somewhat for poor urban whites who may live near and have friendships with people of color on the local level because white poverty brings white people into proximity with people of color in a way that suburban and middle-class life does not (except during gentrification, when the mixing is temporary). Urban whites from the lower classes may have more integrated lives on the micro level, but we still receive the message that achievement means moving away from the neighborhoods and schools that illuminate our poverty. Upward mobility is the great class goal in the United States, and the social environment gets tangibly whiter the higher up you climb. Whiter environments, in turn, are seen as the most desirable.

the sad fact is many whites have no cross-racial friendships at all. Perhaps this is why we rely on such flimsy evidence to certify ourselves as racism-free.

There’s so much in life that is fragile, she thought, but it only means you should love it more, hold it closer, instead of keeping it at a distance worried that it will break your heart.

In fact, racism invariably manifests itself within cross-racial friendships as well. Racism cannot be absent from your friendship.

Yet cross-racial friendships do not block out the dynamics of racism in the society at large, and these dynamics continue unabated.

White people usually get really excited when a person of color likes them at all.

Racism cannot be absent from your friendship.

An important note about Roxannah's background. In my conversation with Dr. Jessica Sanderson (please see Author Acknowledgements), what became obvious to me was that childhood wounds cause us to break down differently. The same wound can cause one person to break toward control, while another breaks toward fragility. We break toward hyper-vigilance, catastrophic thinking, workaholism, or worthlessness. Our deepest wounds can wear a thousand faces. But The Queen's Cook is a not a book about childhood trauma. It is the story of a woman who through hardship finds friendship, love, and a life-changing relationship with God.