I have learned to make do with sympathy.

... Have you never had a sudden need for sympathy, for help or for friendship? Of course you have. I have learned to make do with sympathy. It is easier to come by and it carries no commitment. In the internal monologue, 'please accept my sympathy' comes right before 'now let's get on with something else' ... Friendship is not so easy: it's long and hard to win, but when it's there, you can't get rid of it, you have to make do. In any case, don't imagine that your friends will be phoning you up every evening, as they should, to find out if this happens to be the day you've decided to commit suicide or simply need company or don't feel like going out ... If they do phone, it will be the day when you're not alone and life is smiling on you. As for suicide, they're more likely to drive you to it, by reason of what, according to them, you owe yourself. Heaven preserve us, my dear sir, from being put on a pedestal by our friends.

... Actually, in a way, I'm on the subject with this business of friends and relations. You see, I was told about a man whose friend was put in jail and who slept on the floor of his bedroom every night so that he would not be enjoying a luxury that had been denied to the friend whom he loved. Who would sleep on the floor for us, my dear sir? Am I myself capable of it? Let me tell you, I'd like to be and I shall be. Yes, we'll all be capable of it one day and that will be our salvation. But it's not easy, because friendship is absent-minded or at least powerless. It cannot achieve what it wants. Perhaps, after all, it doesn't want strongly enough. Perhaps we do not love life enough. Have you observed that only death awakens our feelings? How we love the friends who have just departed - don't you find? How we admire those of our masters who have been silenced, their mouths full of dirt! Then our tributes come naturally, tributes that they may have waited all their lives to hear. But do you know why we are always fairer and more generous towards the dead? The reason is simple! We have no obligation where they're concerned! They leave us free, we can take our time, fit the tribute into the interval between cocktails and a nice mistress, in other words, lost moments. If they did oblige us to do anything, it would be to remember, and our memories are short. No, what we like in our friends is fresh death, painful death, our own feelings, in short, ourselves!

- Albert Camus, The Fall