Our modern, rootless times do seem to be a particularly inhospitable environment for loyalty. We come and go so relentlessly that our friendships can't but come and go too. What sort of loyalty is there in the age of Facebook, when friendship is a costless transaction, a business of flip reciprocity.... Friendship held together by nothing more permanent than hyperlinks is hardly the stuff of selfless fidelity.

Loyalty: The Vexing Virtue (ed. Simon and Schuster, 2011) - ISBN: 9781439176887