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We need to have intimate, enduring bonds; we need to be able to confide; we need to feel that we belong; we need to be able to get support, and just as important for happiness, to give support. We need many kinds of relationships; for one thing, we need friends.

Friendships are among the most fundamental of human needs.

The best relationships develop out of friendships.

All our relationships are person-to-person. They involve people seeing, hearing, touching, and speaking to each other; they involve sharing goods; and they involve moral values like generosity and compassion.

The best relationship is one that does not foster too much independence nor too much dependence, but exists in the healthy interdependence zone.

When I look at relationships, my own and others, I see a wide range of reasons for people to be together and ways in which they are together. I see ways in which a relationship - which means something that exists between two or more people - for the most part reinforces people's separateness as individual entities.

The most special relationships, in my experience, are based on a combination of trust and mutual respect.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

Relationships are where we take our recovery on the road.

I need to be loved. I need to be nurtured. I also need peace and stability in my relationships. I can't be in volatile relationships.