Via het altijd inspirerende Brain Pickings kwam ik bij dit boek, nu op de leeslijst: Love Undectable van Andrew Sullivan.
Een paar citaten:
"If love is sudden, friendship is steady. At the moment of meeting a friend for the first time, we might be aware of an immediate “click” or a sudden mutual interest. But we don’t “fall in friendship.” And where love is often at its most intense in the period before the lover is possessed, in the exquisite suspense of the chase, and the stomach-fluttering nervousness of the capture, friendship can only really be experienced when both friends are fully used to each other. For friendship is based on knowledge, and love can be based on mere hope… You can love someone more than you know him, and he can be perfectly loved without being perfectly known. But the more you know a friend, the more a friend he is."
"Love affairs need immense energy, they demand a total commitment and a capacity for pain. Friendship, in contrast, merely needs tending. Although it is alive, a living, breathing thing, and can suffer from neglect, friendship can be left for a while without terrible consequences. Because it is built on the accumulation of past experiences, and not the fickle and vulnerable promise of future ones, it has a sturdiness that love may often lack, and an undemonstrative beauty that love would walk heedlessly past."
In mijn ideale wereld zijn de mooiste liefdes ook vriendschappen - en is vriendschap liefde. Niet de sprookjes-liefde, maar de liefde waarin je elkaar wilt kennen, waarin tijd en verandering en ouder worden geen vijanden zijn.
Vriendschap, volgens Sullivan:
"...a space that allowed the other person to remain safely another person."
Ik vind dit heel mooi. Echt heel mooi.
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