“Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.”

“The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.”

“Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.- Don Corleone”

“Friendship is held to be the severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to a family and clan, whose blood is in your own veins.”

“I've always been a Democrat, it runs in my family.”

“It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.”

“Every relationship is transactional, whether it is a business relationship, a romantic relationship, a political relationship, a friendship, or a familial relationship.”

“Friendship is the positive and unalterable choice of a person whom we have singled out for qualities that we most admire.”

“Work, spirituality, family, friendships, health--you can't ignore any of them or it'll get you in the end.”

“Goethe, whose letters I've been reading very intensively during the past few weeks, is always stressing Verträglichkeit - agreeing to live and let live - as the most important element of friendship: we shouldn't try to change people, but simply let them be as they are, making the best of even partial concord, instead of trying to force a fictitious perfect harmony.”