“Friendships-in-God are not found by seeking friendship, but by seeking God. Those who draw closer to God find such friendships simply burst upon them. These bombshells of intense affection explode without warning in our lives. But they are good surprises.”

“Prayer, it seems, disposes us to new friendship, in that it more and more lays us open to experience from any source, makes us sensitive to every aspect of existence, every leaf, every ray of light, every sorrow, every pain.”

“But the best reason to pray is that God is really there. In praying, our unbelief gradually starts to melt. God moves smack into the middle of even an ordinary day. He is no longer someone we theorize about. He is someone we want to be near.”

“So as we grow in Christ, we grow into new families, formed by a deep common love of God. The bond, it seems, is sacramental.”

“Friendships happen through spending time together.”

“The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. IT is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is he who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside. Let us not reckon without our Host.”

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