Agalia Tan

I’ll invest in the love between us, even when there’s no guarantee of permanence. That’s the tax of living. That’s the cost for feeling any sort of aliveness or tenderness. There’s no insurance on your experience. No way to backstop the loss.

Closeness means we’ll change each other ways we can’t predict. I’m still getting used to both that lightness and that weight.

The important part is choosing re-engagement and revival. Hua Hsu in Stay True: Friendship rests on the presumption of reciprocity, of drifting in and out of one another's lives, with occasional moments of wild intensity.

To be known is to be seen. You bring out a different side in yourself when you’re with that person. Some people make you more talkative, more secure, more experimental. In Winterson’s The Passion, Henri says this about love but I think it’s just as resonant of friendship: It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to... See more

True connection is sometimes lost in the way we currently articulate our friendships: through instagram tags or other forms of signaling. It’s when you feel comprehended, truly understood, free in ways you weren’t before.

Presence is not a feature. It is a choice made moment by moment by someone who could leave but chooses to stay.

But, looking back, there wasn’t a single day I didn’t depend on others: an understanding colleague who told me it was ok to cry, a long-distance call with a dear friend, the countless small kindnesses of the baristas at my favorite coffee shop in the East Village. In the height of my so-called independence, I depended on everyone. Everything good... See more

It’s humbling to remember: we go knocking all the time. Yes, there’s always someone we can help, but there’s always someone whose help we need. The worst thing that can happen in life is not putting your room—your life—on hold to help other people. The worst thing is when you’ve been so successful at ignoring the knocks that people stop knocking on... See more