“When I offer hospitality, something amazing happens--so much more than I have anything to do with. An exchange takes place. Our guests bring who they are with them and enlarge our lives in their offerings.”
“I don’t believe that women care all that much about male friendship, however, to be to a man, primarily and only a-friend-who-is-a-woman is a major gesture that she can make both for him and for herself, for the mere fact that she wins him over with a completely uncommon weapon that has very little contact with her very recognisable and primordial female seductiveness, at the same time catching him in a trap from which he can escape only as a proven and frequently disgraced coward.”
“What would you have me do? Tell me. My pain is yours to share, beloved friend. Allow me to help you. You rage is fearsome but undirected. You point it at yourself.”
“Jack Holby’s parents both worked in Cageley House, his father as an under-butler, his mother as a cook. They were pleasant enough people but I did not see them often. Jack, on the other hand, fascinated me. Although he was only about a year or eighteen months older than I was, and although he had in fact led a much more sheltered existence than my own, he seemed a lot more mature and far more aware of where he saw his life going than I was. The difference between us, I think, was that Jack had ambitions while I had none, ambitions which his unchanging existence throughout his youth had forced him to create. He had spent enough years at Cageley House to know that he did not want to be a stable boy for ever; I had spent enough time travelling around to appreciate a little stability for once. Our differences helped us to become friends quickly and I looked up to him with something approaching hero worship for he was the first male peer I had known whose life did not revolve around stealing from other people’s pockets. Where we had greed and idleness, he had dreams.”
“I won’t run an extra mile for our friendship if you don’t run for it at all”
“Sister Agnes knew if she told you, you’d run off and do what you’re doing now.” “Search for treasure?” “Get into trouble.” I laughed. Edmund smiled over his shoulder. “I’m serious.” “We shall not get into trouble. I promise.” “If I had a piece of silver for every time you’ve told me that, I’d be a rich man.” “I am not at fault for the decision to roll in poison oak.” “I suppose getting stuck up in the giant sequoia wasn’t your fault either?”
“There is indeed a peculiar charm, both in friendship and in Eros, about those moments when Appreciative love lies, as it were, curled up asleep, and the mere ease and ordinariness of the relationship (free as solitude, yet neither is alone) wraps us round. No need to talk. No need to make love. No needs at all except perhaps to stir the fire.”
“On a broad historical view it is, of course, not the demonstrative gestures of Friendship among our ancestors but the absence of such gestures in our own society that calls for some special explanation. We, not they, are out of step.”
“It was a match made in cyber heaven.”
“Believe me, there isn t an intonation in your voice, not a gesture, not a smile that I don t take seriously. But your thoughts I take less seriously. I take seriously all that I find essential and necessary in you. Why do you want particular attention paid to your thoughts, when you have so many other gifts?”
“No necesito hablar Ni mentir privilegios; Bien me conocen quienes aquí me rodean, Bien saben mis congojas y mi flaqueza. Eso es alcanzar lo más alto, Lo que tal vez nos dará el Cielo: No admiraciones ni victorias Sino sencillamente ser admitidos Como parte de una Realidad innegable, Como las piedras y los árboles.”
“What so poor a man as Hamlet is may do t express his love and friending to you, God willing, shall not lack.”
“I wish he would make friends with me. I don t think I have ever had a friend and I should like one.”
“Ne vjerujem da je ženama baš izrazito stalo do muškoga [[Prijateljstvo|prijateljstva]], međutim, biti muškarcu, prije svega –i samo- prijateljica, velika je gesta koju ona može učiniti, kako za njega, tako i za samu sebe, već stoga što ga pridobiva jednim posve neuobičajenim oružjem koje nema mnogo dodira s njenom tako prepoznatljivom, iskonskom ženskom zavodljivošću, istodobno ga hvatajući u klopku iz koje on može uteći jedino kao dokazani, i nerijetko, posramljeni kukavica. ~ iz knjige lirskih eseja Lekcija o drskosti (2000.)”
“Moreover, one should so respect a friend s presence that he dare not perform anything shameful or speak any unbecoming word, since any fault so reflects on a friend that the friend not only blushes and grieves inwardly but also reproaches himself with what he sees or hears, as if he had committed the sin himself.”
“Mbak tahu enggak fitnah itu seperti memakan daging saudaranya sendiri? Itu ghibah! Sama lah.”
“Look at those legs,” Noah says. “Look at that bone structure. Look at those eyes, you could get fucking lost in them.” “You need Google Maps to find your way out of my eyes,” Gideon says, executing an elaborate turn before catwalking back.”