Conversation With Friends Quotes

1. "During the few months Troy had been back home, he'd told his friends about us, and so we quickly eased into the conversation as though we'd all known each other for many years. They embarrassed us with great thanks for having served overseas. They recounted combat events Troy had told them, and we realized by the context of their stories that Troy had made us heroes for his friends because we'd been heroes to him. At this point I was the saddest I'd yet been over Troy's passing, because the true friend from war is the friend who obliterates his own story by telling the stories of others."
Author: Anthony Swofford

2. "Did I help someone to realize a dream they thought they'd lost? Did I listen when someone told me the reward is worth the cost? Did I praise someone for their efforts and encourage someone toward their dreams? Did I help someone to understand the end never justifies the means? Did I make someone laugh and smile when they would much, rather frown? Was I the one who picked them up when everyone put them down? Am I, the one they confide in and know their conversations secure? Did I provide them with someone to trust in knowing their friendship will always endure? Am I humble and constantly striving to become more than I was yesterday? Did I focus on the successes of others and follow through with all that I say? If I constantly strive to become the one who can say I did to did I's. Then my life is fulfilled, knowing I have achieved life's greatest prize."
Author: Carl Morris

3. "I watch, and the mothers watch. I do not know how to interact with the mothers. Am I them? They occasionally try to include me in a conversation, but it's clear they don't know what to make of me. I look over and smile when one of them makes a joke that is laughed at by all. They laugh, I chuckle—not too much, I don't want to seem overeager, but enough to say "I hear you. I laugh with you. I share in the moment." But when the chuckling is over I am still apart, something else, and no one is sure what I am. They don't want to invest their time in the brother sent to pick up Toph while his mother cooks dinner or is stuck at work or in traffic. To them I'm a temp. A cousin maybe. The young boyfriend of a divorcee? They don't care.Fuck it. I don't want to be friends with these women, anyway. Why would I care? I am not them. They are the old model and we are the new."
Author: Dave Eggers

4. "A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also."
Author: Dorothy L. Sayers

5. "...in Aristotle...leisure is a far more noble, spiritual goal than work...leisure is pursued solely for its own sake...: the pleasures of music and poetry, ... conversation with friends, and ...gratuitous, playful speculation. In Latin, the ultimate good is otium — the opposite is negotium, or gainful work.We have sought too much counsel in the proto-Calvinist work ethic preached by St Paul...during the cessation of work we nurture family, educate, nourish friendships....in loafing, most of our innovations come...the routine of daily work has too often served as...sleep...a refuge from two crucial states — awakedness to the needs of others, and to the transcendent, which only comes...loitering, dallying, tarrying, goofing off."
Author: Francine Du Plessix Gray

6. "So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends."
Author: Graham Greene

7. "I'm a huge Spike Lee fan. I saw 'Do The Right Thing' twice in the same night when it first came out and had long conversations with all my friends about the issues in it."
Author: Joe Cornish

8. "Our conversation with God should be utterly free and familiar, because God is the only person who will never, ever misunderstand us and never, ever reject us (hate us, ignore us, or be indifferent to us). These are the tow reasons we hid from other people, even our friends, even our parents, and the tow reasons we should never hide from God."
Author: Peter Kreeft

9. "The first conversation began awkwardly, although Espinoza had been expecting Pelletier's call, as if both men found it difficult to say what sooner or later the would have to say. The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word fate used ten times and the word friendship twenty-four times. Liz Norton's name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word Paris was said seven times, Madrid, eight. The word love was spoken twice, once by each man. The word horror was spoken six times and the word happiness once (by Espinoza). The word solution was said twelve times. The word solipsism seven times. The world euphemism ten times. The word category, in the singular and the plural, nine times. The word structuralism once (Pelletier). The term American literature three times. The words dinner or eating or breakfast or sandwich nineteen times. The words eyes or hands or hair fourteen times. The the conversation proceeded more smoothly."
Author: Roberto Bolaño

10. "I had three long conversations with Marusya over a cup of coffee. She told me her whole rather silly story. To some degree we became friends. I like people like that--doomed, dying, helpless, and brazen. I always say, if you're in trouble, you're not sinning."
Author: Sergei Dovlatov

11. "About eight days ago I discovered that sulfur in burning, far from losing weight, on the contrary, gains it; it is the same with phosphorus; this increase of weight arises from a prodigious quantity of air that is fixed during combustion and combines with the vapors. This discovery, which I have established by experiments, that I regard as decisive, has led me to think that what is observed in the combustion of sulfur and phosphorus may well take place in the case of all substances that gain in weight by combustion and calcination; and I am persuaded that the increase in weight of metallic calyxes is due to the same cause... This discovery seems to me one of the most interesting that has been made since Stahl and since it is difficult not to disclose something inadvertently in conversation with friends that could lead to the truth I have thought it necessary to make the present deposit to the Secretary of the Academy to await the time I make my experiments public."
Author: Stahl

12. "An ideal day for me is a combination of a fun-exciting creative moment with work partners, some laughs and games with my kids, a good surf session, and great conversation with friends around a meal."
Author: Yves Behar

Conversation With Friends Quotes Pictures