“God gave us our relatives: thank god we can choose our friends.”

“Thank goodness, we can choose our friends. We have to take our relatives as they are, and be thankful…”

“We should always choose our books as God chooses our friends, just a bit beyond us, so that we have to do our level best to keep up with them.”

“God gave us free will so that we might choose our own destinies. He left it up to us to achieve them.”

“In our hyper-secular world, worship is still inevitable. But it is vital to remember that our gods don't choose us, we choose them.”

“A friend is more than a therapist or confessor, even though a friend can sometimes heal us and offer us God's forgiveness. A friend is that other person with whom we can share our solitude, our silence, and our prayer. A friend is that other person with whom we can look at a tree and say, "Isn't that beautiful," or sit on the beach and silently watch the sun disappear under the horizon. With a friend we don't have to say or do something special. With a friend we can be still and know that God is there with both of us.”