If God is not an active part in your friendships, you are missing one of life's most important treasures.

We know from research that growth is actually contagious, so if you want to reach your goals, you've got to get around people that are going in the same direction you want to be going, and you will catch the success.

I've always said we need to build resilience locally.

We need to build resilience together, rooted in religion, rooted in schools, rooted in our health care institutions.

I partnered with Mission: it's a really cool company based on giving athletes what they need. I have my own signature lip balm because when I'm up on the hill, protecting your lips is so important.

I love how music and fashion are so similar. We need each other.

What's the difference between a Spartan king and a mid-ranker? One man will lob this query to his mate as they prepare to bed down in the open in a cold driving rain. His friend considers mock-theatrically for a moment. .'The king sleeps in that shithole over there' he replies. 'We sleep in this shithole over here.

Instead we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they're better friends, truer friends. And we're better and truer to them.

Nor am I "leading" in any way that the military manuals would recognise or commend. I'm just slogging miserably beside the others. But we are one, each giving his all. I catch a second wind, and I feel my brothers-in-arms catch theirs too. By

In defeat one learns who are friends to him, and by whom he is accounted friend.

I have often said that loneliness is the predominant attitude in our culture. A person can be lonely in the midst of a party; he can be lonely in a crowd. Loneliness may be experienced by the rich and famous or the poor and unknown.

Without Ruth's partnership and encouragement over the years, my own work would have been impossible. We were called by God as a team.