You might imagine famous author friendships to have the stability of a mean girl clique: competitive, catty, two-faced. Take Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace, for example: After Wallace committed suicide, Franzen wrote and spoke about it publicly as something “calculated to inflict maximum pain on those he loved most” and even called the late author out for embellishing his non-fiction work.

But the fact of the matter is that writers often need other writers. They need people to serve as a second pair of eyes on their work, people who can understand the woes of writer’s block, people who can eventually chase them down and demand that they get something done. They also need friends who can nerd out just as hard on the latest bestsellers and the classics, someone who can spend hours discussing what makes a good story click and shout “Look at these goosebumps!” after discussing it.

So here is an ode to all those great friendships between writers, illustrated in photographs and a few great quotes: