“Who are your friends? Do they believe in you? Or do they stunt your growth with ridicule and disbelief? If the latter, you haven't friends. Go find some.”
Source: Zen in the Art of Writing
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Ray Bradbury 401
American writer 1920–2012Related quotes
“Don't explain. Your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe you”
Source: Economic Warfare Quotes
“Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow.”
The Motto Book (1907).
Variant: Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow.
The Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/tag/virginia-woolf/ traces the origin of such statements to The Intimate Notebooks of George Jean Nathan (1932), where the diarist states:
We were sitting one morning two Summers ago, Ferenc Molnár, Dr. Rudolf Kommer and I, in the little garden of a coffee-house in the Austrian Tyrol. “Your writing?” we asked him. “How do you regard it?” Languidly he readjusted the inevitable monocle to his eye. “Like a whore,” he blandly ventured. “First, I did it for my own pleasure. Then I did it for the pleasure of my friends. And now — I do it for money.”
Misattributed
1983
“Do not let your anger misguide you, my friend.”
When the Elephants Dance
“Do you want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours?”
Addressing an African-American reporter and referring to the Congressional Black Caucus
Comments made during a news conference at the White House https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/us/politics/donald-trump-press-conference-transcript.html?_r=0 (16 February 2017)
2010s, 2017, February
"A Friend of Mine" (song)
Song lyrics
Source: Gilbert O'Sullivan, "A Friend of Mine" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYaGJ3f28OI (song on YouTube)
“You find out who your real friends are when you're involved in a scandal.”
As quoted in "Elizabeth Taylor's 20 best quotes" in The Telegraph (23 March 2011)