My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

The friend everyone counts on, and what it costs to share him.

That’s Douglas. I count on him for everything. If I was stranded on a desert island and could only take one thing, it’d be Douglas. We can share him if you want.

Where the Wild Things Are · Maurice Sendak

Why calling a close friend a sister can feel like a small betrayal.

A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Yet this status is used again and again to connote the highest intimacy. True sisterhood is not the same as friendship. You don’t choose each other and there is no furtive period of getting to know each other. You are a part of each other, right from the start. Look at an umbilical cord—tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential—and compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and a friend.

Blue Sisters · Coco Mellors

The sister who decides things cleanly, and the one who can’t.

I wave a spoonful of cookie dough under Margot’s nose, and she hesitates and then opens her mouth. I feed it to her like a baby. “Wait and see, you and Josh will be back together in a day, maybe two.” But even as I’m saying it, I know it’s not true. Margot’s not the kind of girl to break up and get back together on a whim; once she’s decided something, that’s it. There’s no waffling, no regrets. It’s like she said: when she’s done, she’s just done.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before · Jenny Han