“False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.”

“We have been friends together in sunshine and shade.”

“What our closest friends do for us is to teach us true selflessness. We learn that while it might be safer for them if we keep them out, true friendship means letting them in. We cannot decide for them what they are willing to suffer with us and for us. While we certainly don't want to see our friends suffer, friendship isn't about protecting each other from pain so much as it is about helping each other to become what God has called us to be.”

“It's that old, old fear thing again. Why does it creep along with us, attached to us like our shadow? Why can't it just leave us alone? Why can't we tell each other what we think and what we feel?”

“We all have our moments of weakness. Even the best of us. Luckily, we have friends who keep us in line. I like to think we chose them because they're better than we are.”

“Once in an age God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false-imagining, an unreal character, but looking through the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature,--loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be.”