The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald

". . .I realized why it is so much easier for a man to adjust himself to new surroundings and people than for a woman. Men are so much less demanding in friendship. A woman wants her friends to be perfect. She sets a pattern, usually a reasonable facsimile of herself, lays a friend out on this pattern and worries and prods at any little qualities which do not coincide with her own image. She simply won't be bothered with anything less than ninety per cent congruity, and will accept the ninety per cent only if the other ten per cent is shaping up nicely and promises accurate conformity within a short time. Friends with glaring lumps or unsmoothable rough places are cast off like ill-fitting garments, and even if this means that the woman has no friends at all, she seems happier than with some imperfect being for whom she would have to make allowances.

A man has a friend, period. He acquires this particular friend because they both like to hunt ducks. The fact that the friend discourses entirely in four-letter words, very seldom washes, chews tobacco and spits and random, is drunk a good deal of the time and hates women, in no way affects the friendship. If the man notices these flaws in the perfection of his friend, he notices them casually as he does his friend's height, the color of his eyes, the width of his shoulders; and the friendship continues at an even temperature for years and years and years."

sooooo much truth, it's killing me

not only do I love this book and this writer because she is real and honest, but also because she can be asolutely hilarious when writing about things that were really hard for her.

and.... she wrote some books that were part of my favorite list as a child... Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle anyone??