Close friends. Casual friends are a dime a dozen, and easily replaced. People you can trust, on the other hand...

Depends on one's personality. I am a loner - I don't like being smothered with someone checking up on me all the time - so I appreciate having several casual friends who I can call on to do stuff - and vice versa. - just when I feel like having company.

I have reached the point in life where I believe the word friend is a relative term, and not qualified by an adjective;

I prefer to go for quality than quantity... Granted that's gotten fairly lonely lately..All of my close friends live 2000 miles away..Also I've bounced around a lot lately so making new friends has been a challenge.

We come into this universe alone.
The society created a herd mentality so that we could survive togther- there born groups which then led to friends- to partners and so on so on.
Friends are living souls that help you get on with your daily life-
ex living alone in the woods you quickly make freinds with the critters around you, the bird that comes every morning to sing you melodies ,the beaver that looks at you and then go ons with his work, the fox that shoot cross your front lawn, the surrounding become your freinds
So friends can mean a lot of things to differnet people
How you define casual and close ? Sometime casual freinds do things that are of a close freind nature type are they then become from casual to close
Yes it nice to have friends -depending on the circumstances and surrounding you are in.

I prefer a few really good friends. I use the friends of the few really good friend as my casual friends.

A few real good close friends.

A few really close friends. No question.

I think it totally depends on the type of friend you plan to be.

Casual friends makes you go by, but have no meaning. Close friends are the best, but be careful, you may find disappointment in good friends as you do in love relationships.