Quotes About Family

Manfred was the patriarch, and William was his son. William begat Gravier. Gravier begat Pops. And Pops, late in life when he and Sweetheart had despaired of having a child, begat Patsy. At age sixteen, Patsy gave birth to me and named me Tarquin Anthony Blackwood. As to my father, let me state now plainly and unequivocally that I don't have one. "Patsy

ancestor, and the combination was

Come along, my brave one. Your wife and son want to see you.

mother into leaving twelve and a half million dollars to the Foundation of Being. And not a damned thing to the only child she'd ever had. Ten years ago Rachel might

You're only ever as happy as your least happy child?' 

You wake in the morning, you're feeling fine, but all at once you think, "Something's not right. Something's off somewhere; what is it?" And then you remember that it's your child—whichever one is unhappy.

Oh, a French braid," Greta said. "That's it. And then when she undid them, her hair would still be in ripples, little leftover squiggles, for hours and hours afterward." "Yes…" "Well," David said, "that's how families work, too. You think you're free of them, but you're never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever.

You think we're a family,' Cody said, turning back. 'You think we're some jolly, situation-comedy family when we're in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place, and our mother was a witch.

She loved them so much that she felt a kind of hollowness on the inner surface of her arms whenever she looked at them-an ache of longing to pull them close and hold them tight against her.

The disappointments seemed to escape the family's notice, though. That was another of their quirks: they had a talent for pretending that everything was fine. Or maybe it wasn't a quirk at all. Maybe it was just further proof that the Whitshanks were not remarkable in any way whatsoever.

This is what families do for each other—hide a few uncomfortable truths, allow a few self-deceptions. Little kindnesses." "And little cruelties," he said.

One thing that parents of problem children never said aloud: it was a relief when the children turned out okay, but then what were the parents supposed to do with the anger they'd felt all those years?

It was funny, in her old age, to look back and see for how short a period her nest had NOT been empty. Relatively speaking, it was nothing - empty far longer than full. so much of herself had been invested in those children; who could believe how briefly they'd been with her.

Sometimes she felt like a tiny gnat, whirring around her family's edges

She wished she had had a mother. Well, she had had a mother, but she wished she'd had one who had taught her how to get along in the world better.

So maybe parenthood was meant to be educational, Robin thought—a lesson for the parents on totally other styles of being.

You would think this realization would come as a relief to him. And it did, in part. He felt a rush of love for his whole family, whom it seemed he had underestimated. He had thought that guarding his secret was a kindness to them; he was protecting them from knowledge that would hurt them. But now he saw that not telling them had been more hurtful, and it was they who had been kind.

Oh, the lengths this family would go to so as not to spoil the picture of how things were supposed to be!

Two losses, in fact. Two very dear children: Emily and Nicholas. It was true that these days there happened to be two very dear grown-ups who were also named Emily and Nicholas, but they weren't the same people. It was just as if those children had died. He'd been in mourning ever since.

French Braid reveals the gentle realities of family ties that constrict and those that fall apart altogether, while the daily hum of diligence and possibility reverberates in the background.

She loved them so much that she felt a kind of hollowness on the inner surface of her arms whenever she looked at them—an ache of longing to pull them close and hold them tight against her. The three little boys were such a clumped-together tangle, always referred to as a single unit, but Abby knew how different each was from the next.

Their growing up amounted, therefore, to a gradual dimming of the light at her bedroom door, as if they took some radiance with them as they moved away from her. She should have planned for it better, she sometimes thought. She should have made a few friends or joined a club. But she wasn't the type. It wouldn't have consoled her.

So many unexpected people seemed to edge into a person's life, once that person had children.

Sometimes Rebecca thought that the whole point of having lots of daughters was, the law of averages said at least one of them might behave right at any given time.