Big Friendship Quotes

“We can learn so much about someone by the way they talk about their friends.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“According to Aristotle, friends hold a mirror up to each other. This mirror allows them to see things they wouldn’t be able to observe if they were holding up the mirror to themselves. (We think of it as the difference between a shaky selfie and a really clear portrait taken by somebody else.) Observing ourselves in the mirror of others is how we improve as people. We can see our flaws illuminated in new ways, but we can also notice many good things we didn’t know were there. Until a friend specifically requests you bring your lemon meringue pie to brunch, you might not realize you’ve become an excellent baker. Until a friend finds the courage to tell you that she never feels like you’re listening to her, you might not realize this is how others are perceiving your chatterbox tendencies. After the third friend in a row calls you for help asking for a raise, you might finally give yourself credit as a pretty good negotiator. Once you’ve seen yourself in a mirror of friendship—in both positive and challenging ways—the reflection cannot be unseen.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“I love that you've known every version of me. You were there at the beginning and I want you there at the end.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“Langan adds that being transparent also means opening up about how important someone is to you as a friend—making sure you are saying to them that you value their presence in your life. Don’t just occasionally think of your friend fondly. Tell them that your life would lose meaning if they disappeared from it. Tell them you love them. Tell them exactly why you want to hold on to this friendship and make it last for the long haul.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“Big Friendship can hold you when you’re worried that everything else is falling apart. It can be a space of validation when you feel alone in the world. It can provide the relief of feeling seen without having to explain yourself in too many words. And it offers the security of knowing that you won’t have to go through life’s inevitable challenges alone.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“If you prioritize only your romantic relationships, who is going to hold your hand through a breakup? Relying on your spouse to be your everything will definitely undo your marriage. No one human can meet your every single emotional need. If you only prioritize your kids, what happens when they’re grown and living far away, wrapped up in their own lives? Or if you only prioritize work? Wow, that’s too sad to even contemplate.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“Behind every meet-cute is an emotional origin story, one that answers a deeper question. Not “How did you two meet?” but “Why did you become so deeply embedded in each other’s lives?”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“The upside is you get to be seen for who you really are. You get the security of a safe harbor. You get the satisfaction of knowing that you chose each other and continue to choose each other every day. You get to know yourself deeper than you ever thought possible, thanks to this external mirror in the form of your friend. And you get a lot of really good inside jokes.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“We love and admire our friends so much, we want the world to respect and reward them for their efforts. We want our friends to demand more for themselves. And get it.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“First, friends who are attached have a desire to see a lot of each other and know what’s going on in each other’s lives. Second, the friends provide a secure base for each other—meaning the friendship allows them to go out and explore other friendships, romantic relationships, new jobs, anything that might feel scary but ultimately positive, because they can look over their shoulder and know their friend is there for them. And third, they offer each other a safe harbor. When things go wrong for one friend, the other loyally and dependably steps up to offer support.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“Friendship is a real-deal insurance policy against the hurricanes of life—and there’s social-science evidence that the hard stuff seems less difficult with a good friend by your side.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“Just as there are conditions for creating a Big Friendship, there are also some ways to make sure it stays big over many years. Emily Langan, the professor who applied attachment theory to close friendships, told us that staying attached to a close friend can be boiled down to three main things: ritual, assurances, and openness.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“While we don’t select friends because they might help us advance our careers, here’s the dirty capitalist truth: friendship has been the source of some of our biggest professional leaps. We are women for whom work is a huge part of our identity, in a way that wasn’t true for either of our mothers. Friends are how we’ve figured out the salary we deserve and how to negotiate for it. They’ve been a source of solace when our bosses shortchanged us, and they’ve been the inspiration to keep going when, having moved up, we become the bosses and feel like imposters.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“As humans, we are all thoroughly shaped by the people we know and love. Day to day, our friends influence our tastes and our moods. Long term, they can also affect how we feel about our bodies, how we spend our money, and the political views we hold. We grow in response to each other, in ways both intentional and subconscious.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“In the eyes of the other, we each had an undefinable emotional appeal that was at once adventurous, mysterious, and idealized. In other words, it was exciting in that pit-of-the-stomach way. This kind of immediate connection is rare, so when it happens it’s incredible—as in not credible, as in so magical it’s difficult to believe.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“At a cultural level, there is a lot of lip service about friendship being wonderful and important, but not a lot of social support for protecting what’s precious about it. Even deep, lasting friendships like ours need protection—and, sometimes, repair.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“It’s hard to remember who we were that night at Dayo’s house, before we were friends. Not only because it was a long time ago, but also because we have changed each other in countless ways, from the profound to the imperceptible. We didn’t just meet each other that night. We began the process of making each other into the people we are today.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“Pat Parker’s poem “For the White Person Who Wants to Know How to Be My Friend” begins with two pieces of advice: “The first thing you do is to forget that i’m Black. / Second, you must never forget that i’m Black.” After building a story of sameness and years of feeling in sync about almost everything, Ann had grasped the first rule but neglected the second.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“It can be extremely hard to figure out the right amount of growth and sacrifice to be devoting to a friendship, because we're not taught that friends are worth stretching for at all. Your spouse? Definitely ... Your family? There's a therapist for that too. Friends though? When things get hard, it's socially acceptable to abandon them with no conversation about it whatsoever, even if you've been intimate parts of each other's lives for years.”
― Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“I love that you’ve known every version of me. You were there at the beginning and I want you there at the end.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“surgeon general Vivek Murthy in the Harvard Business Review. “Loneliness and weak social connections are associated with a reduction in life span similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“Our choice to show up at weddings as a family unit wasn’t just a cute stunt. It was an extension of our political beliefs that friendship is a relationship that’s equal in importance to romantic and family bonds.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“The truth is that friendships collapse all the time. They work well in a certain context, and then end when that context changes and one or both people outgrow them. One friend stops stretching, the other friend stops reaching out, and soon they haven’t spoken in six months… or six years.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“The researcher Adam Grant has found that the people who are unafraid to share their knowledge and resources with others in their community are the most likely to succeed over the long term.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“It’s possible to go months without seeing a longtime friend and still feel close to them, but new friends require steady investment.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“The writer Wesley Morris calls this experience the trapdoor of racism. “For people of color, some aspect of friendship with white people involves an awareness that you could be dropped through a trapdoor of racism at any moment, by a slip of the tongue, or at a campus party, or in a legislative campaign,” he wrote in 2015. “But it’s not always anticipated.” The trapdoor describes the limited level of comfort that Black people can feel around white people who are part of their lives in a meaningful way. Even if these white people decide they will confront racism every day, it’s guaranteed they will sometimes screw up and disappoint the Black people they know.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“When you are obsessed with your friend's brain, it's natural to crave ordered conversations and excuses to go deeper.”
― Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“Theory,” it was an operating principle of our friendship. We came to define Shine Theory as an investment, over the long term, in helping a friend be their best—and relying on their help in return. It is a conscious decision to bring our full selves to our friendships and to not let insecurity or envy ravage them. It’s a practice of cultivating a spirit of genuine happiness and excitement when our friends are doing well, and being there for them when they aren’t.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“Aminatou learned that if they give you what you ask for without flinching, you probably didn’t ask for enough. She also started asking the men in her life how much they made, and she was appalled when she realized most of her women friends were grossly underpaid. These men weren’t smarter or more talented. They just asked for more. And they usually got it.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“helping a friend be their best—and relying on their help in return. It is a conscious decision to bring our full selves to our friendships and to not let insecurity or envy ravage them. It’s a practice of cultivating a spirit of genuine happiness and excitement when our friends are doing well, and being there for them when they aren’t.”
― Aminatou Sow, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close