“The element that people don't consider is that a friendship is about the only relationship we experience that is mutually voluntary. It is not really bound by family, money, or jobs. It is only bound by inclination. Once that is gone. It is gone. It feels powerful… it's not. It is delicate.”
Stephen Tobolowsky in a Facebook comment on June 16, 2014 https://www.facebook.com/chendavid/posts/713475407441?comment_id=713488835531.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Stephen Tobolowsky 5
actor and writer 1951Related quotes

Source: The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness (1962), p. 91

Postscript
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: The ideal power with which we feel ourselves in connection, the 'God' of ordinary men, is, both by ordinary men and by philosophers, endowed with certain of those metaphysical attributes which in the lecture on philosophy I treated with such disrespect. He is assumed as a matter of course to be 'one and only,' and to be 'infinite'; and the notion of many finite gods is one which hardly any one thinks it worth while to consider, and still less to uphold. Nevertheless, in the interests of intellectual clearness, I feel bound to say that religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace. Philosophy, with its passion for unity, and mysticism with its monoideistic bent, both 'pass to the limit' and identify the something with a unique God who is the all-inclusive soul of the world. Popular opinion, respectful to their authority, follows the example which they set.

1960s, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966)
Source: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
Context: The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others- the living- are those who pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.
Context: But with the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right... and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are the wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it... howling through a turn to the right, then to the left, and down the long hill to Pacifica... letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge... The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others- the living- are those who pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

On the Lisbon Treaty, Jyllands-Posten, 25 June 2007

Source: Creation and Fall Temptation: Two Biblical Studies

Bradford J. Wolgast
The Passage Trilogy, The Passage (2010)
Source: The Twelve