Male Friendship Quotes

“The love of man to woman is a thing common and of course, and at first partakes more of instinct and passion than of choice; but true friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal.

–Plato-”
― Plato

“... male company, sheer complicit male company: the complicity of males which is like, indeed is, a kind of complicity in crime, in chauvinism, in getting away with things, in just gluttonously enjoying the present even if hell is all around.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“...the fundamental rule of male friendship [:] intent was the gesture, but activity was the glue.”
― Billy Baker, We Need to Hang Out: A Memoir of Making Friends

“In a wonderful essay for -Salon-, the sociologist Lisa Wade wrote that 'to be close friends, men need to be willing to confess their insecurities, to be kind to others, have empathy and sometimes sacrifice their own self-interest. "Real Men," though, are not supposed to do these things. They are supposed to be self-interested, competitive, non-emotional, strong (with no insecurities at all), and able to deal with their emotional problems without help. Being a good friend, then, as well as needing a good friend, is the equivalent of being girly.”
― Billy Baker, We Need to Hang Out: A Memoir of Making Friends

“Ball busting [a friendly form of humor]...contains a fundamental flaw, one that has done immeasurable harm to the male psyche, and basically eliminated dance and music as potential outlets for bonding.

That is the use of the term 'gaaay.'

It's a form of self-policing, some fucked-up safe word that got called out if any behavior approached a level where it felt intimate or affectionate. Really anything that felt 'feminine,' and that list was long.

It was not used to describe romantic attraction to another many--though it certainly insulted that entire idea in an inexcusable way--but instead was used to reinforce what Niobe Way, a psychology professor at NYU, calls the 'crisis of connection' among men. We so fear being called -gaaay- for making connections that are 'feminine' that we sacrifice intimacy for casual banter.

It's a huge disconnect, perhaps the central one at the heart of the problems of with modern male bonding. And unlike many 'male' things, it cannot be blamed on genetics. It's cultural. It's learned.”
― Billy Baker, We Need to Hang Out: A Memoir of Making Friends

“Just like that, we started to see each other most mornings, which meant we quickly went from two guys who liked each other and kept saying they wanted to hang out to actual full-blown bros. This of course meant that every woman who knew us...was falling over herself to label our relationship a 'bromance.' That's a term that was coined in the nineties by the skateboarding magazine -Big Brother- to describe skaters who spent a ton of time together, but it has morphed into a gentle insult for any guys who dare to get too close. It's not as condescending as 'bros,' and it doesn't cut quite as wrong as being shouted down with 'gaaay.' No, the bromance lived in the category of the oh-aren't-you-cute pat on the head.”
― Billy Baker, We Need to Hang Out: A Memoir of Making Friends

“The distance between us and the maleness of our friendship precluded revealing anything that truly mattered, and at the time I was too naive to know that if you were friends with someone––truly friends––then you told him what was going on ("It's called 'catching up,'" my wife informed me when I asked how it was possible for her to yap with her girlfriends for as long as she did and share every innocuous detail of her life). Instead, I thought that by concisely presenting the most easygoing and put-together version of myself, I was being "all good."

Really, I was just fronting. And Rob was doing the same.”
― Jeff Hobbs, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League

“He wondered at the damage such simple words could do when there was no love behind them. Then he wondered how many kind words it would take to repair a lifetime of such damage.”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“Male friendships often happened effortlessly, like two dogs bonding over a shared love of chasing their own tails.”
― Ashish Kharloya, The Four-Year Transform: A Campus Comedy