“
Memory can refuse to let you forget what you’d like to and run away with what you want to remember. It’s an unreliable bitch, or your best friend. Sometimes, it’s both at once.
”
”
Megan Hart (Broken)
“
You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
”
”
Idries Shah (Reflections)
“
The trouble with friends was that you couldn’t get rid of them. There was no way to take back a friendship in the wake of betrayal or disappointment. The friendship, and everything that went with it, stayed. It just became unreliable, like an abandoned house; you still knew where all the rooms were, and which stairs creaked underfoot, but you had to check every floorboard for rot before trusting your weight to it.
”
”
Chris Moriarty (Spin State (Spin Trilogy, #1))
“
Yesterday, when I took the stage for the sixth time, I read a poem about unreliable friends, people you love and feel bonded to but can never truly trust. It was about feeling alone and vulnerable, and never being able to fully let your guard down.
”
”
Tamara Ireland Stone (Every Last Word)
“
As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk-ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated. Tailor
”
”
Milton Sanford Mayer (They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45)
“
Prose writers, by contrast, are unreliable friends: They are always studying you to see if there’s anything in your personality or appearance that they can steal for their next narrative.
”
”
Charles Baxter (Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction)
“
Perhaps my favorite crone heroine of all time is Marian Leatherby, the deaf, toothless, ninety-two-year-old protagonist of The Hearing Trumpet, a novel written by Surrealist luminary Leonora Carrington. Marian sports a short gray beard that she finds “rather gallant,” and she has a dear geriatric friend named Carmella who states, “People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats.
”
”
Pam Grossman (Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power (Witchcraft Bestseller))
“
Words, ever unreliable, were no one’s friend.
”
”
Zoje Stage (Baby Teeth)
“
Fate was a dangerously unreliable accomplice. Sometimes your friend, but just as often an unpredictable enemy.
”
”
Erik Axl Sund (The Crow Girl)
“
At the moment, the general perception ... is that the United States is an unreliable friend and a harmless enemy.
”
”
Bernard Lewis
“
One who has unreliable friends may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
”
”
Anonymous
“
Philippa Somerville was annoyed. To her friends the Nixons, who owned Liddel Keep, and with whom Kate had deposited her for one night, she had given an accurate description of Sir William Scott of Kincurd, his height, his skill, his status, and his general suitability as an escort for Philippa Somerville from Liddesdale to Midculter Castle. And the said William Scott had not turned up. She fumed all the morning of that fine first day of May, and by afternoon was driven to revealing her general dissatisfaction with Scotland, the boring nature of Joleta, her extreme dislike of one of the Crawfords and the variable and unreliable nature of the said William Scott. She agreed that the Dowager Lady Culter was adorable, and Mariotta nice, and that she liked the baby.
”
”
Dorothy Dunnett (The Disorderly Knights (The Lymond Chronicles, #3))
“
There were some people who just needed to be married, who felt like they were only wearing one shoe when they were alone. Astrid had some friends like that—or she had had some friends like that. Women who needed a partner that badly tended to be unreliable friends, Astrid found, which was why they needed a new partner so badly when their first one died, smothered by all the marital attention.
”
”
Emma Straub (All Adults Here)
“
In the years of its rise the movement little by little brought the community's attitude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resentment, from trust and fear to suspicion. The development seems to have been inherent; it needed no planning and had none. As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, "blood," "folkishness") seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the "little man," the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon "intellectuals" as unreliable and, among those unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated.
”
”
Milton Sanford Mayer (They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45)
“
Come, Paul!" she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, I cried -
"My heart will break!"
What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the whisper, "Trust me!" lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet with relief - I wept.
"Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it will pass," said the calm Madame Beck.
To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply, harshly, and briefly - "Laissez-moi!" in the grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but life-giving.
"Laissez-moi!" he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial muscles all quivering as he spoke.
"But this will never do," said Madame, with sternness. More sternly rejoined her kinsman -
"Sortez d'ici!"
"I will send for Père Silas: on the spot I will send for him," she threatened pertinaciously.
"Femme!" cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his highest and most excited key, "Femme! sortez à l'instant!"
He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what I had yet felt.
"What you do is wrong," pursued Madame; "it is an act characteristic of men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive, injudicious, inconsistent - a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character."
"You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me," said he, "but you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste," he continued less fiercely, "be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face, and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends; in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what I see; it must have and give solace. Leave me!"
This time, in the "leave me" there was an intonation so bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement; it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.
The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more myself - re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death.
"It made you very sad then to lose your friend?" said he.
"It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur," I said.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Villette)
“
When I became a Christian as a teenager, I gathered a false belief to myself that my Christian friends would be my forever friends. Surely, since we both loved Jesus and followed Him, we would always be in each other's lives. No one would hurt the other -- because Jesus! It didn't take long for that theory of mine to be tested by reality.
”
”
Mary E. DeMuth (The Seven Deadly Friendships: How to Heal When Painful Relationships Eat Away at Your Joy)
“
Some people are like moths. They come to be around you when your life is bright and nice. They come to amuse themselves through your light. But, they also flee as soon as the lights go off.
”
”
Mitta Xinindlu
“
What kind of soldier are you that you’re going to just sit in a cell while the world is thrown into chaos? Do you not understand what could happen if those weapons fall into the wrong hands? How could you be so selfish? (Syd)
I’m selfish? Look, Agent Westbrook, your daddy’s a Boston stockbroker. I’m a death broker. I’m sure you don’t lecture Daddy on finance, so don’t even try to lecture me on assassination politics. I know all about them. Some bureaucratic ass-wipe sitting in a pristine office that’s totally isolated from the rest of the world decides the son of King Oomp-Loomp is a threat. He then hands down orders to people like me to go off King Oomp-Loompa’s son. Like an idiot, I do what he says without question. I hunt my target down, using information that is mostly bullshit and unreliable, gathered by someone like you who assured me it was correct as the time. But hey, if it changes minute by minute, and God forbid we pass that along to you. So me and my spotter lie in the grass, sand, or snow for days on end, cramped and hungry, never able to move more than a millimeter an hour until I have that one perfect shot I’ve been waiting for days. I take it, and then we lie there like pieces of dirt until we can inch our way back to safety, where hopefully the helicopter team will remember that they were supposed to retrieve us. Have you any idea of the nerves it takes to do what I do? To lie there on the ground while other armed men search for you? Have them step on you and not be able to even breathe or wince because if you do, it’s not only your life, but the life of your spotter? Do you know what it’s like to have the brains of your best friend spayed into your face and not be able to render aid to him because you know he’s dead and if you do, you’ll be killed too? I have been into the bowels of hell and back, Miz Westbrook. I have stared down the devil and made him sweat. So don’t tell me I don’t take this seriously. (Steele)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Bad Attitude (B.A.D. Agency #1))
“
That was interesting.Who was that?"
Matt looks unhappy. "What?" I ask him.
"You'll talk to that guy,but you won't talk to us anymore?"
"Sorry," I mumble, and climb out of his car. "He's just a friend.Thanks for the ride."
Matt gets out,too. Cherrie starts to follow,but he throws her a sharp look. "So what does that mean?" he calls out. "We aren't friends anymore? You're bailing on us?"
I trudge toward the house. "I'm tired, Matt.I'm going to bed."
He follows anyway.I dig out my house key,but he grabs my wrist to stop me from opening the door. "Listen,I know you don't want to talk about it,but I just have this one thing to say before you go in there and cry yourself to sleep-"
"Matt,please-"
"Toph isn't a nice guy.He's never been a nice guy. I don't know what you ever saw in him.He talks back to everyone, he's completely unreliable, he wears those stupid fake clothes-"
"Why are you telling me this?" I'm crying again.I pull my wrist from his grasp.
"I know you didn't like me as much as I liked you. I know you would have rather been with him,and I dealth with that a long time ago.I'm over it."
The shame is overwhelming. Even though I knew Matt was aware that I liked Toph,it's awful to hear him say it aloud.
"But I'm still your friend." He's exasperated. "And I'm sick of seeing you waste your energy on that jerk. You've spent all this time afraid to talk about what was going on between you two,but if you'd bothered to just ask him, you would have discovered that he wasn't worth it. But you didn't.You never asked him, did you?"
The weight of hurt is unbearable. "Please leave," I whisper. "Please just leave."
"Anna." His voice levels, and he waits for me to look at him. "It was still wrong of him and Bridge not to tell you. Okay? You deserve better than that. And I sincerely hope whomever you were just talking to"-Matt gestures toward the phone in my purse-"is better than that.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
We should not become misologues, as people become misanthropes. There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable
discourse. Misology and misanthropy arise in the same way. Misanthropy comes when a man without knowledge or skill has placed great trust in someone and believes him to be altogether truthful, sound, and trustworthy; then, a short time afterwards he finds him to be wicked and unreliable, and then this happens in another case; when one has
frequently had that experience, especially with those whom one believed to be one’s closest friends, then, in the end, after many such blows, one comes to hate all men and to believe that no one is sound in any
way at all.
”
”
Plato (Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo)
“
we should not become misologues, as people become misan- d
thropes. There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable
discourse. Misology and misanthropy arise in the same way. Misanthropy comes when a man without knowledge or skill has placed great
trust in someone and believes him to be altogether truthful, sound, and
trustworthy; then, a short time afterwards he finds him to be wicked
and unreliable, and then this happens in another case; when one has
frequently had that experience, especially with those whom one believed e
to be one’s closest friends, then, in the end, after many such blows,
one comes to hate all men and to believe that no one is sound in any
way at all.
”
”
Socrates
“
Settle. The word gives me pause...I suppose what you are reading is my attempt to settle. There's a story I've been trying to tell, one about friendship and friends and what place they have in life, and one I've been trying not to tell about my family. Does that make me an unreliable narrator? To a certain extent, aren't we all? We don't get to write from scratch the whole story of our lives. We are given certain plot points that must be incorporated. Maybe we settle when we've done the best we can.
Is it real? I once asked Amber. What? she said. Your life. The things that happen to you. Is it real or are you just really good at making it all into stories? She said, I don't understand the difference.
”
”
Jessica Francis Kane (Rules for Visiting)
“
Not only have I had friends give up on me for being unreliable, I’ve also had relationships go south because I can’t keep track of how I’m being treated. Is this friend saying something unkind for the first time or the fiftieth? What was that last fight about, anyway? Forgetful people—particularly those of us with low self-esteem (see above)—can be easy to manipulate.
”
”
Jessica McCabe (How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It))
“
In the years of its rise the movement little by little brought the community’s attitude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resentment, from trust and fear to suspicion. The development seems to have been inherent; it needed no planning and had none. As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, “blood,” “folk-ishness”) seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the “little man,” the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intellectuals” as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated.
”
”
Milton Sanford Mayer (They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45)
“
Ceaseless change is an unreliable basis for lasting fulfillment. Realizing this, many people begin to wonder whether a deeper source of well-being exists. Is there a form of happiness beyond the mere repetition of pleasure and avoidance of pain? Is there a happiness that does not depend upon having one’s favorite foods available, or friends and loved ones within arm’s reach, or good books to read, or something to look forward to on the weekend? Is it possible to be happy before anything happens, before one’s desires are gratified, in spite of life’s difficulties, in the very midst of physical pain, old age, disease, and death?
”
”
Sam Harris (Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion)
“
How to own a smartphone and still be a functioning human being Don’t feel you always have to be there. In the not-so-olden days of letters and landlines, contacting someone was slow and unreliable and an effort. In the age of WhatsApp and Messenger it’s free and easy and instant. The flipside of this ease is that we are expected to be there. To pick up the phone. To get back to the text. To answer the email. To update our social media. But we can choose not to feel that obligation. We can sometimes just let them wait. We can risk our social media getting stale. And if our friends are friends they will understand when we need some headspace. And if they aren’t friends, why bother getting back anyway? Turn off notifications. This is essential. This keeps me (just about) sane. All of them. All notifications. You don’t need any of them. Take back control.
”
”
Matt Haig (Notes on a Nervous Planet)
“
He whispered: ‘Is it this? Is this possible? I’ll put a marvel to you. That your cousin has always hoped. That from the very first moment we met, she hoped, far down in her mind, that we should be like this — of course, very far down. That she fought us on the surface, and yet she hoped. I can’t explain her any other way. Can you? Look how she kept me alive in you all the summer; how she gave you no peace; how month after month, she became more eccentric and unreliable. The sight of us haunted her — or she couldn’t have described us as she did to her friend. There are details — it burned. I read the books afterwards. She is not frozen, Lucy, she is not withered up all through. She tore us apart twice, but in the rectory that evening she was given one more chance to make us happy. We can never make friends with her or thank her. But I do believe that, far down in her heart, far below all speech and behaviour, she is glad.
”
”
E.M. Forster (A Room with a View)
“
He whispered: ‘Is is this? Is this possible? I’ll put a marvel to you. That your cousin has always hoped. That from the very first moment we met, she hoped, far down in her mind, that we should be like this — of course, very far down. That she fought us on the surface, and yet she hoped. I can’t explain her any other way. Can you? Look how she kept me alive in you all the summer; how she gave you no peace; how month after month, she became more eccentric and unreliable. The sight of us haunted her — or she couldn’t have described us as she did to her friend. There are details — it burned. I read the books afterwards. She is not frozen, Lucy, she is not withered up all through. She tore us apart twice, but in the rectory that evening she was given one more chance to make us happy. We can never make friends with her or thank her. But I do believe that, far down in her heart, far below all speech and behaviour, she is glad.
”
”
E.M. Forster (A Room with a View)
“
We are attached to friends and relatives because of the temporary benefit they have brought us in this life. We hate our enemies because of some harm they have inflicted on us. People are not our friends from birth, but become so due to circumstances. Neither were our enemies born hostile. Such relationships are not at all reliable. In the course of our lives, our best friend today can turn our to be our worst enemy tomorrow. And a much hated enemy can change into our most trusted friend. Moreover, if we talk about our many lives in the past, the unreliability of this relationship is all the more apparent. For these reasons, our animosity toward enemies and attachment toward friends merely exhibits a narrow-minded attitude that can only see some temporary and fleeting advantage. On the contrary, when we view things from a broader perspective with more farsightedness, equanimity will dawn in our minds, enabling us to see the futility of hostility and clinging desire.
”
”
Dalai Lama XIV (Stages of Meditation)
“
You see, I suffer from a disease that you cannot see; a disease that there is no cure for and that keeps the medical community baffled at how to treat and battle this demon, who’s[sic] attacks are relentless. My pain works silently, stealing my joy and replacing it with tears. On the outside we look alike you and I; you won’t see my scars as you would a person who, say, had suffered a car accident. You won’t see my pain in the way you would a person undergoing chemo for cancer; however, my pain is just as real and just as debilitating. And in many ways my pain may be more destructive because people can’t see it and do not understand....” “Please don’t get angry at my seemingly [sic] lack of interest in doing things; I punish myself enough, I assure you. My tears are shed many times when no one is around. My embarrassment is covered by a joke or laughter…” “I have been called unreliable because I am forced to cancel plans I made at the last minute because the burning and pain in my legs or arms is so intense I cannot put my clothes on and I am left in my tears as I miss out on yet another activity I used to love and once participated in with enthusiasm.” “And just because I can do a thing one day, that doesn’t mean I will be able to do the same thing the next day or next week. I may be able to take that walk after dinner on a warm July evening; the next day or even in the next hour I may not be able to walk to the fridge to get a cold drink because my muscles have begun to cramp and lock up or spasm uncontrollably. And there are those who say “But you did that yesterday!” “What is your problem today?” The hurt I experience at those words scars me so deeply that I have let my family down again; and still they don’t understand….” “On a brighter side I want you to know that I still have my sense of humor….I love you and want nothing more than to be a part of your life. And I have found that I can be a strong friend in many ways. Do you have a dream? I am your friend, your supporter and many times I will be the one to do the research for your latest project; many times I will be your biggest fan and the world will know how proud I am at your accomplishments and how honored I am to have you in my life.” “So you see, you and I are not that much different. I too have hopes, dreams, goals… and this demon…. Do you have an unseen demon that assaults you and no one else can see? Have you had to fight a fight that crushes you and brings you to your knees? I will be by your side, win or lose, I promise you that; I will be there in ways that I can. I will give all I can as I can, I promise you that. But I have to do this thing my way. Please understand that I am in such a fight myself and I know that I have little hope of a cure or effective treatments, at least right now. Please understand….
”
”
Shelly Bolton (Fibromyalgia: A Guide to Understanding the Journey)
“
You are routinely separated from things you enjoy. And someday that separation will be permanent. Friends drift away, children leave home, careers end, and eventually your own final breath comes and goes. Everything that begins must also cease. Everything that comes together must also disperse. Experiences are thus incapable of being completely satisfying. They are an unreliable basis for true happiness.
”
”
Rick Hanson (Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom)
“
One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Proverbs 18:24
”
”
Anonymous (NIV Bible)
“
Honesty. You can’t cheat on someone without lying to them. Real remorse spits out the truth—all the truth. And it doesn’t editorialize and say things like “She really needed me” or “He was just a friend.” Real remorse answers the same questions over and over and over again and gives truthful, consistent answers. (None of which is “I don’t know.”) If real remorse doesn’t know, real remorse does whatever it can to find out. Real remorse doesn’t balk at a polygraph. GINR thinks polygraphs are expensive and unreliable. Real remorse would stand on its head wearing a tutu if it gave you peace of mind.
”
”
Tracy Schorn (Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life: The Chump Lady's Survival Guide)
“
I have big dreams and big goals. But also big limitations, which means III never reach the big goals unless I have the wisdom to recognize the chains that bind me. Only then will I be able to figure out a way to work within them instead of ignoring them or naively wishing they'll cease to exist. I'm on a perennial quest to find balance. Writing helps me do that.
To quote Neruda: Tengo que acordarme de todos, recoger las briznas, los hilos del acontecer harapiento (I have to remember everything, collect the wisps, the threads of untidy happenings).
That line is ME. But my memory is slipping and that's one of the
scariest aspects about all this. How can I tell my story, how can I create a narrative around my life, if I cant even remember the details?
But I do want to tell my story, and so I write. I write because I want my parents to understand me. I write to leave something behind for them, for my brother Micah, for my boyfriend Jack, and for my extended family and friends, so I won't just end up as ashes scattered in the ocean and nothing else.
Curiously, the things I write in my journal are almost all bad:
the letdowns. the uncertainties. the anxieties. the loneliness. The good stuff I keep in my head and heart, but that proves an unreliable way of holding on because time eventually steals all memories-and if it doesn't completely steal them, it distorts them, sometimes beyond recognition, or the emotional quality accompanying the moment just dissipates.
Many of the feelings I write about are too difficult to share while I'm alive, so I am keeping everything in my journal password-protected until the end. When I die I want my mom to edit these pages to ensure they are acceptable for publication-culling through years of writing, pulling together what will resonate, cutting references that might be hurtful. My hope is that my writing will offer insight for people living with, or loving someone with, chronic illness.
”
”
Mallory Smith (Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life)
“
I have big dreams and big goals. But also big limitations, which means I'II never reach the big goals unless I have the wisdom to recognize the chains that bind me. Only then will I be able to figure out a way to work within them instead of ignoring them or naively wishing they'll cease to exist. I'm on a perennial quest to find balance. Writing helps me do that.
To quote Neruda: Tengo que acordarme de todos, recoger las briznas, los hilos del acontecer harapiento (I have to remember everything, collect the wisps, the threads of untidy happenings). That line is ME. But my memory is slipping and that's one of the scariest aspects about all this. How can I tell my story, how can I create a narrative around my life, if I cant even remember the details?
But I do want to tell my story, and so I write.
I write because I want my parents to understand me. I write to leave something behind for them, for my brother Micah, for my boyfriend Jack, and for my extended family and friends, so I won't just end up as ashes scattered in the ocean and nothing else.
Curiously, the things I write in my journal are almost all bad: the letdowns. the uncertainties. the anxieties. the loneliness. The good stuff I keep in my head and heart, but that proves an unreliable way of holding on because time eventually steals all memories-and if it doesn't completely steal them, it distorts them, sometimes beyond recognition, or the emotional quality accompanying the moment just dissipates.
Many of the feelings I write about are too difficult to share while I'm alive, so I am keeping everything in my journal password-protected until the end. When I die I want my mom to edit these pages to ensure they are acceptable for publication-culling through years of writing, pulling together what will resonate, cutting references that might be hurtful. My hope is that my writing will offer insight for people living with, or loving someone with, chronic illness.
”
”
Mallory Smith (Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life)
“
Many neurodiverse people suffer from Autistic inertia.[24] The same heightened focus that makes us so good at studying our special interests for hours also makes it challenging for us to get off the couch and attend to the overflowing trash. To an external, neurotypical observer, it doesn’t look like we’re struggling. It just looks like we’re being “lazy.” Almost every neurodiverse person I’ve spoken to has been deemed “lazy” numerous times by exasperated parents, teachers, and friends. People see us sitting frozen, incapable of taking action, and assume it’s because we don’t care or lack willpower.[25] Then they admonish us for being apathetic and unreliable, which leaves us feeling even more paralyzed by anxiety.
”
”
Devon Price (Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity)
“
His hardcore days were over. Back then, he’d had his unreliable moments: drunk, he’d mistaken nuns for whores and policemen for friends; sober, he’d made eye contact with ex-wives, no recognition on his side, and only relief on theirs. Bad times. But even then, he’d never had a gold-standard Moscow hood shimmy past without clocking him for what he was.
”
”
Mick Herron (Dead Lions (Slough House, #2))
“
Teens said—and researchers appeared to accept—that certain features of Instagram could aggravate mental health issues in ways beyond its social media peers. Snapchat had a focus on silly filters and communication with friends, while TikTok was devoted to performance. Instagram, though? It revolved around bodies and lifestyle. The company disowned these findings after they were made public, calling the researchers’ apparent conclusion that Instagram could harm users with preexisting insecurities unreliable.
”
”
Jeff Horwitz (Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets)
“
Because there is an unspoken announcement commensurate with that look. Women who’ve had the needle, or the knife, look like they’re saying: ‘My friends are not my friends, my men are unreliable and faint hearted, my lifetime’s work counts for nothing, I am 59 and empty-handed. I’m still as defenceless as the day I was born. PLUS, I’ve now spunked all my yacht money on my arse. By any sane index, I have failed at my life.
”
”
Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
“
There is no such stimulating instant possible for old friends for they are bound by preconceived ideals of personality—they are pigeon-holed as this or that—circumscribed by mutual duty and sacrifice ; they must reconcile present whims to past vagaries; they are held to strict account of consistency with previous moods; but on our first meeting with another we are free of all this constraint, and if we have courage may meet soul to soul without reserves. We may confess unreliable things in that moment, for there is no perspective of formulated opinion into which the confidence must be fitted—the little secret is safe alone in the new mind, and will not be held to intolerable account. We may even for this once state a brutal truth, for we are unpledged to distressing considerations. We may be in some few sacred thoughts more intimate with a stranger than with an old friend. Such is the divine franchise of this first sudden opportunity. No compact is yet sealed; you must take me as you find me, like me or not, it matters little, since it is for us to say whether or not we shall meet again.
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Gelett Burgess (The Romance of the Commonplace)
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The fact that young adults, in particular, are redefining family to include close friends, even though this is a regularly shifting group, points to the impermanence and unreliability associated with family in the minds of millions of people. Given these continuing shifts, churches may have a difficult time connecting with the unchurched if their ministries are tailored for traditional households. In particular, single and married-without-children adults have little reason to connect with a church if its resources are funneled toward children’s and family ministry.
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George Barna (Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them)
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Ehsan Sehgal Quotes about Wikipedia
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* If you are jobless, you do not have the proper ability, even if you can’t get a cleaning job, join Wikipedia, or become an editor. You may knock all the educated figures, lawyers, professional journalists, academics, and specialists of the various subjects down by the Wikipedia rules and policies that contradict each other. You have a useful weapon, which is called consensus. Your friends can support you in winning all disputes. You can change from wrong to right and right to wrong. You can decide the reliability and assessment of subjects; however, no matter whether you qualify for that or not, you have multiple tools for harassing others. That means Wikipedia.
* The duffer’s heaven is Wikipedia, where academic ones are the house arrested and used for their shelter of qualification.
* Wikipedia is the best place for poor grammar.
* If one desires to explore the unique idiots and fools, Wikipedia has that and such a place.
* The scholarly world rejects Wikipedia as a reliable website because most of the world’s silly clowns contribute their ignorance within the garbage of Wiki-Rules, which also, indeed, contradict each other.
* You cannot delete this, whether with due or undue weight. It is social media, not Wikipedia.
* One cannot trust Wikipedia since its articles have minute or continual variant content in all subjects, which demonstrates a lack of qualification and vision. One may find the most authentic and reliable articles on websites that even have no editorial board.
* Notability cannot prevail in any subject’s reality.
* Virtually, Wikipedia rules are not the law of the judiciary, approved by the majority of the parliament that applied accurately and precisely within its context. Conversely, Wikipedian rules, in other words, tools are only garbage of the frustrated and ignorant heads, which support the blackmailers for blackmailing and comfort for its founding architecture, and also fools who have to execute nothing other than fighting, wasting time. Consequently, every second Wikipedia, having no established and qualified paid editorial board, stays as an encyclopedia of Idiots-Pedia. Thus, it endorses itself as unreliable and untrustworthy an ordinary website, where educationally-unmatured children contribute and decide one’s notability, alongside ignorant ones as well.
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Ehsan Sehgal
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...I've come to understand that memory is a capricious friend, and never more unreliable than when we trust it absolutely.
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Beatriz Williams (The Golden Hour)
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Even if you do get what you want, it’s genuinely great, and it doesn’t cost much—the gold standard—every pleasant experience must inevitably change and end. Even the best ones of all. You are routinely separated from things you enjoy. And someday that separation will be permanent. Friends drift away, children leave home, careers end, and eventually your own final breath comes and goes. Everything that begins must also cease. Everything that comes together must also disperse. Experiences are thus incapable of being completely satisfying. They are an unreliable basis for true happiness.
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Rick Hanson (Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom)
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This was part of what MS did. It turned a woman who wanted nothing more than to be friendly and outgoing into an unreliable last-minute canceller. I’d learned the hard way that making plans led to constant disappointment.
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Jennifer L. Hart (Midlife Bed and Broomstick (Cougars and Cauldrons, #1))
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do you think most people today are unfamiliar with the history of Willowbrook? 2. When Sage discovers that her twin sister, Rosemary, has gone missing from Willowbrook, she takes a bus to the institution to help with the search. She goes alone because her stepfather is cold and indifferent, and she feels like her friends are unreliable. Do you think Sage’s lack of knowledge about the “school” influenced her decision to go there by herself? What would you have done in that
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Ellen Marie Wiseman (The Lost Girls of Willowbrook)
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I gather my grub and sit behind my desk. He moves a chair, situated too far for his liking, and presses it very close to the front of my desk. He extricates a long envelope, squished in his side pocket, and proudly slaps it in front of me on my desk. “My grades,” he announces, “from camp.” His voice has moved to a preadolescent octave of excitement, and I scurry to join him at the parade. “De veeeras,” as I relieve the transcript from its container. Looney straightens his back and hops a little in the chair. “Straight A’s,” he says. “Seeeerrriioo?” I say. “Me la rallo,” he says. “Straight A’s.” Like a kid fumbling with wrapping on a present, I get the transcript out and extend it open. And, sure enough, right there before my eyes: 2 Cs; 2 Bs; 1 A. And I think, Close enough. Not the straightest A’s I’ve ever seen. I decide not to tell Looney he’s an “unreliable reporter” here. “Wow, mijo,” I tell him, “Bien hecho. Nice goin’.” I carefully refold the transcript and put it back in the envelope. “On everything I love, mijo,” I say to him, “if you were my son, I’d be the proudest man alive.” In a flash, Looney situates his thumb and first finger in his eye sockets, trembling, and wanting to stem the flow of tears, which seem to be inevitable at this point. Like the kid with the fingers in the dike, he’s shaking now and desperate not to cry. I look at this little guy and know that he has been returned to a situation largely unchanged. Parents are either absent at any given time or plagued by mental illness. Chaos and dysfunction is what will now surround him as before. His grandmother, a good woman, whose task it is now to raise this kid, is not quite up to the task. I know that one month before this moment I buried Looney’s best friend, killed in our streets for no reason at all. So I lead with my gut. “I bet you’re afraid to be out, aren’t you?” This seems to push the Play button on Looney’s tear ducts, and quickly he folds his arms on the front of my desk and rests his sobbing head on his folded arms. I let him cry it out. Finally, I reach across the desk and place my hand on his shoulder. “You’re gonna be okay.” Looney sits up with what is almost defiance and tends to the wiping of his tears. “I . . . just . . . want . . . to have a life.” I am taken aback by the determination with which he says this. “Well, mijo,” I say to him, “who told you that you wouldn’t have one?
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Gregory Boyle (Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion)
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Almost no one I know calls friends merely to have the kind of long, reflective, intimate conversations that were common in earlier decades; phones are for practical exchanges—renegotiating plans, checking in on arrangements. Emails, which in the 1990s seemed to resemble letters, now resemble texting, brief bursts of words in a small space, not to be composed as art, archived, or mused over much. A lot of people are too busy to hang out without a clear purpose, or don’t know that you can, and the often combative arenas and abstracted contact of social media replace physical places (including churches) to hang out in person.
Correspondence, that beautiful word, describes both an exchange of letters and the existence of affinities; we correspond because we correspond. As a young woman, I had long, intense conversations with other young women about difficult mothers, unreliable men, about heartaches and ambitions and anxieties. Sometimes these conversations were circular; sometimes they got bogged down by our inability to accept that we weren’t going to get what seemed right or fair. But at their best, they reinforced that our perceptions and emotions were not baseless or illegitimate, that others were on our side and shared our experiences, that we had value and possibility. We were strengthening ourselves and our ties to one another.
Conversation is a principal way that we convey our support and love to each other; it’s how we find out who our friends are and often how friendship takes place. A friendship could be imagined as an ongoing conversation, and a conversation as a collaboration of minds, and that collaboration as a brick out of which a culture or a community is built.
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Rebecca Solnit (Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays))
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Late on the night of August 27, with a warm breeze at his back and nine cold Budweisers in his belly, Keith Higstrom decided to go hunting. His friends declined to accompany him, as Keith was as clumsy and unreliable a shooter as he was a drunk.
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Carl Hiaasen (Stormy Weather (Skink #3))
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I have not in this book discussed homoerotic behaviour, and that particular form of male bonding and female bonding loosely called ‘the homosexual community’. These large subjects require extensive treatment. But, very briefly, it should be said here that there may be analytic and practical profit in seeing male homosexuality as a specific feature of the more general phenomenon of male bonding. For a variety of obvious and more subtle reasons, male homoeroticism is socially organized differently and occurs more frequently than the female variety. There are a host of other differences which, in part, reflect the biologically based patterns which must accompany such a profound matter as seeking erotic contact, establishing sexual identity, and defining sexual role. The effect of homoerotic relationships in work, political, and other groups is of considerable interest in terms of many of the questions I have raised in this book. From a strictly biological viewpoint, there is no good reason for forbidding or even discouraging homoerotic activity, though in terms of Euro-American family structure and sexual attitudes there may be sociological reasons. As I have tried to indicate, there are important inhibitions in much of Euro-American culture – if not elsewhere too – against expressing affection between men, and one result of this inhibition of tenderness and warmth is an insistence on corporate hardness and forcefulness which has contributed to a variety of ‘tough-minded’ military, economic, political, and police enterprises and engagements.
Of course, a fear of homoeroticism is not the only reason for this – a number of others have been described here too. But homoerotic activity has been widely and powerfully defined as aberrant (though as Kinsey has suggested, about half American males have had homosexual activity, while at least a third have had experiences culminating in orgasm). Much guilt and uncertainty must plague many of the participants in these relationships. So must the insecurity about possibly being or becoming ‘queer’ or ‘bent’ among other men who may feel drawn to their colleagues and friends in ways I have described but whose repertoire of explanations of their feelings is overwhelmed by their community’s assertion that men tender with each other are unmanly and unreliable. It remains a worthy subject of exploration to learn more about the dynamics of tender male interchanges, both for the sake of scientific understanding, and perhaps for providing information on the basis of which greater sympathy and opportunity may confront persons often harassed and disdained by themselves as well as others. That this may accompany a changed ideal of manhood, of corporate structure, of political acumen, and of the role of hard dominance, is not accidental but intrinsic to the whole argument of this book.
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Lionel Tiger (Men in Groups)
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The first driver is Novelty. If everyone has already heard of it and it is not novel, there is no reason to refer it to someone... You can actually have Novelty be present in some degree with almost any product, all the time, even old established products... It needs to give people a chance to tell their friends and family about this distinction that makes them look good, because their friends and family would not have heard of it before. ... The next aspect is Utility. In other words, will the majority of the people you mention it to have a use or need for it... Whenever possible it is best to target networks that are both broad and deep. A broad network is one with a large number of members. The more critical aspect however is depth; this represents the frequency of communication within this network or their structures for sharing information. An example of a network that is relatively quite deep would be golfers. Not only do fellow golfers frequently discuss their sport, they have magazines, television shows, newspaper columns and specific locations to indulge their interest. ... The third characteristic is Dependability. If something is seen as unreliable or inconsistent, you will not refer it. Why not? It would not make you look good. It is not that it is 100% failure free, but rather that it performs exactly as expected.... The fourth characteristic is Economy. Economy does not mean cheaper necessarily. It is just that it has a better value and you get more of what you wanted out of it. Very often what you get out of Economy is image. We are not really buying products and services, we are shopping for approval.... Strangely, a Hummer is going to be economical for some people. There are very few vehicles that get the kind of attention a Hummer gives.
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Scott Degraffenreid and Donna Blandford (Embracing the N.u.d.e. Model - The New Art and Science of Referral Marketing)
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The Sunset was transformed. The grocery store on Irving was gourmet. A girl I was friends with in high school worked the meat counter. People who looked like frat boys crowded the streets, wearing college sweatshirts and sipping health drinks out
of giant Styrofoam containers. They even moved the old post office, which felt like a grievous insult. Everything got converted
by money and I started to miss these grim places that offered no happy memories, but I wanted them back. The bars with sticky floors and French tickler dispensers in the bathrooms, like the Golden Grommet, which we called the Golden Vomit, for the old Irish men who slept in its doorway, waiting for it to open at seven a.m. I missed the lonely, unreliable streetcars, which now ding-dinged every eight minutes and were full of people in expensive shoes with careful hair.
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Rachel Kushner (The Mars Room)
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Instead of a coup d’état, MacMahon’s associates risked a general election—a daunting prospect given the amount of opposition that they now faced. With little appreciation for the nature of that opposition, they put off the elections for many months, during which they embarked on a series of actions that amounted to mass arm-twisting—prosecuting newspapers, threatening owners of republican meeting places, dismissing “unreliable” local officials, and forbidding circulation of opposition circulars and propaganda while conducting their own massive propaganda campaign. Their actions, which betrayed more than a whiff of desperation, merely united the previously fragmented opposition, of which Gambetta now took command.
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Mary McAuliffe (Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends)