Aquarius
The vitality of the act was entirely obfuscated, the beauty, the terror, the sacrifice.' He took one last drag of this cigarette and put it out. 'Quite simply,' he said, 'we didn't believe. And belief was the one condition which was absolutely necessary. Belief, and absolute surrender.
Donna Tartt
Some friendships end not because you stopped caring but because you started caring about something that mattered more than keeping things easy between you. The silence that has settled is not the absence of affection but the presence of a line you could not cross and they could not see. You chose the harder thing over the smoother thing, and now the cost sits in your phone as messages you do not send and invitations you do not extend. What you protected was not the friendship but something larger that the friendship could not hold.