"True friends: only a few have 'em, but only a few will admit that they don't"
About this Quote
Friendship is one of those social currencies everyone claims to be rich in, and Brian Celio’s line pokes at that inflation with a grin. The first clause pretends to be comforting - “only a few have ’em” - but it’s really a setup. The turn is the real punch: scarcity isn’t the embarrassing part; denial is. Celio isn’t mourning how hard it is to find true friends so much as needling the cultural pressure to appear socially abundant.
The quote works because it treats “true friends” as a status marker rather than a relationship: something you possess, something you can be judged by. That’s the subtext hiding in the casual contraction “’em,” which makes the observation sound like barroom wisdom while delivering a sharper critique of performance culture. If you admit you don’t have true friends, you’re confessing more than loneliness; you’re admitting you might be unliked, unchosen, or peripheral. So people round up acquaintances into “best friends,” confuse proximity with loyalty, and convert social media visibility into proof of connection.
Celio, as a contemporary novelist, is writing into an era where friendship is both genuinely precarious (mobility, work churn, atomized living) and relentlessly branded (group photos, public birthday tributes, curated intimacy). The line lands because it’s less a definition of friendship than an X-ray of insecurity: the fear isn’t having few true friends - it’s being the only one honest enough to say so.
The quote works because it treats “true friends” as a status marker rather than a relationship: something you possess, something you can be judged by. That’s the subtext hiding in the casual contraction “’em,” which makes the observation sound like barroom wisdom while delivering a sharper critique of performance culture. If you admit you don’t have true friends, you’re confessing more than loneliness; you’re admitting you might be unliked, unchosen, or peripheral. So people round up acquaintances into “best friends,” confuse proximity with loyalty, and convert social media visibility into proof of connection.
Celio, as a contemporary novelist, is writing into an era where friendship is both genuinely precarious (mobility, work churn, atomized living) and relentlessly branded (group photos, public birthday tributes, curated intimacy). The line lands because it’s less a definition of friendship than an X-ray of insecurity: the fear isn’t having few true friends - it’s being the only one honest enough to say so.
Quote Details
| Topic | Friendship |
|---|
More Quotes by Brian
Add to List
