One of the strange things about friendship is that time together isn't cancelled out by time apart. One doesn't erase the other or balance it on some invisible scale. You can spend a few hours with someone and they will change your life, or you can spend a lifetime with a person and remain unchanged.
Interpretation
True friendship transcends time and distance, influencing lives profoundly.
This quote emphasizes the idea that the quality of friendship is not solely determined by the amount of time spent together. Rather, significant moments can have a profound impact on our lives, regardless of how much time we have known someone, while long-term relationships may not always lead to personal growth or change.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of relationships, you could quote this to highlight how deep connections can form in brief encounters.
People who lose children have their hearts warped into weird shapes. Some try to deny it has happened. Some pretend it hasn't. Losing friends or parents is not the same. To lose a child is beyond comprehension. It defies biology. It contradicts the natural order of history and genealogy. It derails common sense. It violates time. It creates a huge, black, bottomless hole that swallows all hope.
That is the remarkable thing about drinking: it brings people together so quickly, but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years.
Gatewood Galbraith was a good friend, and a tireless advocate for the repeal of the ridiculous ban on hemp & marijuana. His book ‘The Last Free Man Standing’ says it all.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.
Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
We've always had each other's backs in and out of competition. We support each other the most because we're the only ones that know what it's like to go through what we do, and so we can't be more thankful for each other. We're like sisters.
When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun.'
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