Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

The people you choose to have around you make all the difference. My family and close friends keep me grounded. You have to have a mind of your own and a strong head on your shoulders. Cricket is the most important thing to me, so the rest of it pales in comparison.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.

Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.

I think women love very hard. We love men. We just love with everything we have. And sometimes, I don’t know that that love is met with the type of dignity that we wish it would be met with.

There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

In the spring of 1936, I was introduced by friends to Jean Tatlock. In the autumn, I began to court her. We were at least twice close enough to marriage to think of ourselves as engaged.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

You gotta understand: I believe a woman should praise the man, the king. If you holding it down for your woman, I feel like the woman should praise. And the man should praise the queen.

For most of us, relationship with another is based on dependence, either economic or psychological. This dependence creates fear, breeds in us possessiveness, results in friction, suspicion, frustration.

Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

I mean… in life… what relationship is easy?

A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend – and he’s a priest.

I love us so incredibly, insanely deeply; it’s almost unbearable to see what we do to ourselves.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.

You might be the funniest guy in the world, but if you don’t have anything to talk about, people are eventually going to gravitate towards the guy that’s actually saying something.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not.

I’ve been careful in love. I’ve been careless in love. And I’ve had adventures I wouldn’t trade for anything.

It’s probably the worst feeling in the world, when you’re deeply and madly in love with a woman and you know she’s not feeling you the same way, and you don’t know why.

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.

Ever since I dated a woman, I know what it is to grab a curve on a woman’s body. Skinny’s not fine when the lights are low.

There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving – by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

You bring children into the world. You love them with heart and soul.

Men who think that a woman’s past love affairs lessen her love for them are usually stupid and weak.

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

Often we can help each other most by leaving each other alone; at other times we need the hand-grasp and the word of cheer.

You can’t have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits, it keeps becoming something else.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

Friendship is essentially a partnership.

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

I spend a lot of time just, you know, with my girlfriend and my dog. And I mean, we don’t have a lot of furniture in our house, so it’s really simple. And we’re trying to build products for everyone in the world, right. And you don’t want to get isolated to do that.

If you like a person you say ‚let’s go into business together.‘ Man is a social animal after all, but such partnerships are fraught with danger.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

I have a family, loving aunts, and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything except my one true friend. All I think about when I’m with friends is having a good time. I can’t bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don’t seem to be able to get any closer, and that’s the problem.

Absolutely not. I have no problem with commitment. In fact, I love having someone in my life.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

We want our marriage to be a triumph, not a tragedy.

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.

I haven’t had that one great love, which is good. I don’t want that to be in the past – I want it to be in the future.

No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.

We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

You can’t trust very many people.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.