“Je ne suis pour toi qu’un renard semblable à cent mille renards. Mais, si tu m’apprivoises, nous aurons besoin l’un de l’autre. Tu seras pour moi unique au monde. Je serai pour toi unique au monde.”
“But, said Sam, and tears started in his eyes, I thought you were going to enjoy the Shire, too, for years and years, after all you have done. So I thought too, once. But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger; some one has to give them up, lose them, so others may keep them.”
“So there they go, Jim running slower to stay with Will, Will running faster to stay with Jim, Jim breaking two windows in a haunted house because Will’s along, Will breaking one window instead of none, because Jim’s watching. God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other.”
“People can switch to a bad attitude anytime, you must be ready to accommodate all shades of acquaintances.”
“That’s why everyone hates each other nowadays,’ he reckoned. ‘Because they are overloaded with non-friends friends. Ever heard about Dunbar’s number?’ And then he had told her about a man called Roger Dunbar at Oxford University, who had discovered that human beings were wired to know only a hundred and fifty people, as that was the average size of hunter-gatherer communities.”
“Grandmomma always said people were like tacos—the harder they were, the easier they broke. Being soft meant being adaptive, more flexible. “When you’re soft, you can contain more. And if you contain more, the world can’t break you.”
“Many treat friendships and other human connections as if they are things they can store in a closet where they can come back one day and find them unaltered. Alas, human connections do not survive with this mentality.”
“Give your friendships the magic you would give a romance. Because they re just as important. Actually, for us, they re way more important.”
“We all carry a multitude of ghosts around with us: impressions of other people, strong or weak, deep from long acquaintance or shallow with brevity. Those ghosts are maps, updated with each encounter, made detailed, judged, liked or disliked. They are, if you ask a philosopher, all we can ever really know of the other people in the world.”
“I have always wanted a brother. I have a sister, instead, and I love her very much, but I also wanted a brother. Have you ever felt like that?” At the other boy’s resounding, bemused silence, he continued, “Do you want to be brothers, then? We can be family.”
“Some people, some events, make you lose your head. They re like guillotines, cutting your life in two, the dead and the alive, the before and after.”
“No one has ever asked you to make a floor-to-ceiling-sized friendship collage for their birthday. Or ring them three times a day. No one will cry if you don’t invite them to dinner because you don’t have enough chairs. If you feel exhausted by people, it’s because you’re willingly playing the martyr to make them like you. It’s your problem, not theirs.”
“Ya need some girlfriends, hon, cause they re forever. Without a vow.”
“Have a best friend in life first,so you can cry on his/her Shoulder if she/he dumped you.”
“Give me that man That is not passion s slave, and I will wear him In my heart s core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee.”
“Okay, tell me your top five tips, I say, suddenly realizing Alex is going to be here any minute. I m not a BuzzFeed article. Quick, just tell me the most important things.”
“Share your smile with the world. It’s a symbol of friendship and peace.”