16 brilliant quotes about female friendship

Welcome to Besties Week! We’re kicking off the release of our first HelloGiggles book, A Tale of Two Besties, with an epic celebration of friendship and stories about friendship. Read an excerpt of the book, buy a copy, catch us on our cross-country book tour, and share your photos from our events by tagging us @hellogiggles #ATaleofTwoBesties.

In the meantime, join the party right here. All week long, our contributors will be sharing stories, essays and odes to their very own partners-in-crime. Read, laugh, cry (because you’re laughing so hard) and share with your bestie!

My sixth grade yearbook was lined with BFF quotes like “Good friends are like stars. . . You don’t always see them, but you know they are always there.” These proclamations of friend-love were important, they had the same significance as having a half heart necklace that read “BE FRI” or “ST ENDS.” Even though I have no yearbooks to write in now, it remains important to me to reflect about what my best friends mean in a more long-lasting and grown-up way.

Here are some my favorite quotes about female friendship.

16. Oprah Winfrey

“Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo—what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.”

15. Nicole Richie

“True friends are like diamonds—bright, beautiful, valuable and always in style.”

14. Zooey Deschanel

“Girls get competitive, as though there’s only one spot in the world for everything — but that’s not true. We need to stick together and see there’s more to life than pleasing men. It’s important not to cut yourself off from female friendships. I think sometimes girls get scared of other girls, but you need each other.”

13. Gossip Girl

“Everyone knows you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends.”

12. Chelsea Handler

“It’s been my experience that people who make proclamations about themselves are usually the opposite of what they claim to be. If someone is truly a loyal friend, then they wouldn’t need to broadcast it; eventually, people will figure it out. I have a lot of good friends and not one of them has ever introduced themselves by saying, ‘I’m a very good friend.'”

11. Christina, Grey’s Anatomy

10. Lauren Conrad

“I think a good friend, to me, is all about trust and loyalty. You don’t ever want to second-guess whether you can tell your friend something.”

9. Kristen Wiig

“I feel there’s so much pressure, especially for women, to declare what their life’s going to be and what their career is, and are you married yet? Are you single? But you’re 30. And girlfriends are so important. You can have a boyfriend or husband when you’re 30, but you still need your girlfriends.”

8. Greta Gerwig

“I think that, definitely in your 30s and 40s and early 50s, a lot of women can lose sight of each other because the pressures of marriage and family can take over, but I’ve found that in my mom’s generation and for different women I’ve known in their 60s, they’ve seemed to really find each other again, in a significant way. Whether it’s that they got divorced or the kids are grown up, they have all this time again. I’ve known more women in their 60s who have traveled with each other or see each other all the time and hang out all the time. I feel like it can be rediscovered as a primary relationship, maybe later in life.”

7. Mindy Kaling, The Mindy Project

6. Beyoncé

“I love my husband, but it is nothing like a conversation with a woman that understands you. I grow so much from those conversations.”

5. Charlotte, Sex and the City

4. Abbi and Ilana, Broad City

3. Lena Dunham

“I think about my best friendship — which the Marnie-Hannah friendship in Girls is based on — as like a great romance of my young life.”

2. Tina Fey

Tina on Amy joining her at SNL. . . “Amy made it clear that she wasn’t there to be cute. She wasn’t there to play wives and girlfriends in the boys’ scenes. . .I was so happy. Weirdly, I remember thinking, ‘My friend is here! My friend is here!’ Even though things had been going great for me at the show, with Amy there, I felt less alone.”

1. Amy Poehler

“All I can tell you today is what I have learned. What I have discovered as a person in this world. And that is this: you can’t do it alone. As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.”

All images via Tumblr.