The pickpocket takes from your pocket and he becomes a criminal, and when the wife takes thousand dollars from your pocket, you do not consider her to be criminal. You laugh, “Oh, you have taken the money?” “Yes, I’ve taken.” The business is a pickpocket. But in one case we say “criminal,” and one case we say “friend.” The business is the same. Svajanakhya-dasyu. Actually thieves and rogues, but we have named them “relatives.”

From Srila Prabhupada’s Morning Walk Conversation — 8 August, 1976