“Life, you are our friend. Death, our lover.”

“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.”

“The death of our close friends and relatives proves that how close the death is to us!”

“We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.”

“Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.”

“We meet fellow humans throughout our travels,
Become close — friends, dates, lovers.
Always we are distanced again
from death, geography, or meeting others,
Only dialtone on the phone,
cold and empty beneath the covers.”

“There are books… which rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences.”

“I only know that in our choice of friends and lovers and teachers who will change our lives, we are guided by forces which have nothing to do with the rationalizations we give.”

“I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred — that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt…. If we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend.”

“Life without friends is like a mirrorless life, friends are like a mirror that connects you to yourself. Life without friends seems like an incomplete picture in which there is no color, friends make our colorless world colorful and life beautiful.”