Audre Lorde

"I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."

I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking."

Audre Lorde

Jodi Picoult

"In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future."

Jodi Picoult

Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear."

Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

On friendship

"Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. 'Pooh?' he whispered.
'Yes, Piglet?'
'Nothing,' said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. 'I just wanted to be sure of you.'"

A. A. Milne

"Can miles truly separate you from friends.... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?"

Richard Bach

"A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are."

Unknown

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words"

Unknown

"A friend is a hand that is always holding yours, no matter how close or far apart you may be. A friend is someone who is always there and will always, always care. A friend is a feeling of forever in the heart."

Collin McCarty

"True friends are those who lift you up when your heart's wings forget how to fly"

Unknown

"Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget"

Randolf G

"A true friend is one who knows all about you and likes you anyway."

Christi Mary Warner

"However rare true love maybe , it is less so than true friendship"

Albert Einstein

"People who cannot understand when you are silent, can never understand when you speak."
Mayank Saraf

"Never let your friendship die because of a lie, tell the truth."

Unknown

"Friendship is a prism through which the many variations of beauty are revealed in our lives."
Anonymous

"Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends."

Epicurus (A Guide to Happiness)

"Life is an ugly, awful place not to have a best friend"

Sarah Dessen (Someone Like You)

"When you have no light to guide you and no one to walk beside you, I will come to you. When the night is dark and stormy, you won't have to reach out for me, I will come for you."

Unknown

"It takes a minute to say hello and forever to say goodbye."

Dr. Nidhi Gupta

"Don't let your dreams be just dreams."

Mayank Saraf

"A friend can tell you things you don't want to tell yourself"

Frances Ward Weller

"A friend accepts us as we are yet helps us to be what we should"

Unknown

"I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar."

Robert Brault

"I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better."

Plutarch

"If you are to have friend's, you should have friends that are truthful and can tell a good story."

Alexandria Esobar

"Love is friendship set on fire."

Unknown

"A friend isn't judged by how often you get together, but by a total lack of awkwardness when you do. "

Kang Ho Dong

"Perhaps he does not want to be friends with you until he knows what you are like. With owls, it is never easy-come-easy-go."

T.H. White (The Sword in the Stone)

"A friend loves you, makes you feel alright, troubles are not troubles when you talk, listen and accept you as you are, because you will feel the same and love the same."

Anonymous

"Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?"

Jane Austen

"A friend is someone who loves you, when you forget to love yourself "

Unknown

We spent all those years talking about stuff we had in common, and the last few months noticing all the ways we were different and it broke both of our hearts."

Nick Hornby

"The worst thing about being lied to is knowing you weren't worth the truth "

Unknown

"We come back to the same people to learn something about how we have changed. We want to be assured that we have changed. We so want our pictures to paint differently than they do."

Heather Duffy

"When it hurts to look back and your scared to look ahead you can look beside you and your best friend will be there."

Unknown

"Flowers leave some of their fragrance in the hand that bestows them."

Chinese Proverb

"Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too."

Stephen King

"Men have forgotten this truth,' said the fox. 'But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.'"

Antoine de Saint-Exupérye (The Little Prince)

Bessie Anderson Stanley

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

Bessie Anderson Stanley