It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.

I’ve married somebody who I knew for 14 years. So, I’m just living with a friend. All through my ups and downs in football, from winning the I-League to losing the ISL final, she has been a source of great support.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

I have noticed… that men usually leave married women alone and are inclined to treat all wives with respect. This is no great credit to married women.

Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake.

We will stand up for our friends in the world. And one of the most important friends is the State of Israel. My administration will be steadfast in support Israel against terrorism and violence, and in seeking the peace for which all Israelis pray.

I learned a great many years ago that in a fight between husband and wife, a third party should never get between the woman’s skillet and the man’s ax-helve.

I’m sick of the tabloids‘ saying I obsess over guys. Why would you obsess over guys? They don’t like it.

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

Every man’s reputation proceeds from those of his own household.

The true worth of a man is not to be found in man himself, but in the colours and textures that come alive in others.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

Counsel with your parents is a privilege at any age.

Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.

Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.

When Nirvana became popular, you could very easily slip and get lost during that storm. I fortunately had really heavy anchors – old friends, family.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

I’ve seen my friends take someone back after they’ve cheated because they fit perfectly.

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

I definitely don’t think that money can buy you love. It can buy you affection but certainly not love.

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

He who hath many friends hath none.

I think any man who lets a woman pick what he should wear… I mean, you gotta draw the line somewhere as a man. I see these guys, ‚My wife told me to wear this!‘ And I just shake my head.

Lovers often invest their first meetings with retrospective significance, as if to try to conjure the elements of the numinous out of the stubborn witness of the everyday.

Any man who doesn’t love his mama can’t be no friend of mine.

My problem was my inability to spend much time at home. I thought my family was secure, so I went running around everyplace else. I guess I had more of an effect on other people’s kids than I did my own.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

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.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I’ve had a lot of experience with that.

I love my friends and my past, and it’s made me who I am.

I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women… no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

We’re close friends – the American people, the Israeli people, our governments. There’s absolutely no daylight – none – between us and the Israelis on the question of Israel’s security.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

I don’t hate women – they just sometimes make me mad.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.

When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.

How do I know about a man’s needs for a sex symbol? I’m a girl.

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.

I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that.

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

There was one incident at a movie theater where my girl got mad at these guys who were talking behind us. I never looked back there, but she was like, ‚Will you all just shut up!‘ And I just got up and moved three rows in front. She was like, ‚What are you doing?!‘ I was like, ‚You better get up here! I don’t play the fighting games.‘

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

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.

Sucking up to the biggies won’t get us anywhere.

The men and women of Afghanistan are building a nation that is free, and proud, and fighting terror – and America is honored to be their friend.

If you are not being bullied all I would say – cause I like to talk about the other side of it as well – is you know, be someone that nurtures, and if there’s someone in your class that maybe doesn’t have a lot of friends, be the person that sits with them in the cafeteria sometimes; be the bigger person.

I never promise anything. I don’t promise anything to my mum. I don’t promise anything to the supporters.

You can’t be in love with a Google search.