Quotes About Family

I would give it all up, all the success I have had as a writer, all of it I would give up—in a heartbeat I would give it up—for a family that was together and children who knew they were dearly loved by both their parents who had stayed together and who loved each other too.

Her grandmother said, "Don't come back. Don't get married. Don't have children. All those things will bring you heartache

When Chrissie left for college, then Becka the next year, I thought—and it's not an expression, I'm saying the truth—I did think I would die.

She pictured a dandelion gone by, the white, almost airless pieces of her family scattered so far. The key to contentment was to never ask why; she had learned that long ago.

She pictured a dandelion gone by, the white, almost airless pieces of her family scattered so far.

And—I know the defensiveness in this sentence—my parents and my sister and my brother never wrote me, or called me, and when I called them it was always hard; I felt I heard in their voices anger, a habitual resentment, as though they were silently saying You are not one of us, as though I had betrayed them by leaving them.

This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly.

What am I going to do, Bob? I have no family." "You have family," Bob said. "You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane. And a nephew who used to be kind of a drip but apparently is not so much of a drip now. That's called family.

am not going to say anything more about this. But I loved him, my father. I did.

She thought how she had passed by him when he'd asked for a hug, how she had seen her mother do that to him, too, only sometimes Anita would touch his shoulders and kiss the air beside his cheek. Maybe Julie was right

would give it all up, all the success I have had as a writer, all of it I would give up—in a heartbeat I would give it up—for a family that was together and children who knew they were dearly loved by both their parents who had stayed together and who loved each other too.

and then I would think about when the girls were little, but they were somehow not always happy memories for me, because I seemed only to remember how William had been cheating on me for so many years during that time, and so what I might otherwise have thought of as a good memory was not one.

Each of his sons had been his favorite child.

From the corner of his eye, he watched his sister; he thought she was a good driver. He liked her bulkiness, the way she filled her seat and drove with such authority. He wished he could tell her this; he wished he could say something more than that she was great. He finally said, 'Vicky, we didn't turn out so bad, you know.

He had died on his bed, the same bed that my father had died on many years earlier.

My mother, because she was my mother, had great gravity in my young life. In my whole life. I did not know who she was, and I did not like who she had been. But she was my mother, and so some part of me had continued to believe things she had said.

Sometimes I thought I would die from the pain of our separating, and the pain it caused my girls, but I did not die, and I am here, and so is William.

We talked about our girls and we both thought they would be all right; they were already all right but when you have children you worry about them forever

William had felt alone in the world. And now he had a sister. Inside myself I wept. From happiness and sadness both.

I got on the train, and what I remember is watching New Jersey as the sun came up, and feeling so grateful for my home, so deeply, deeply grateful to be going home to New York, to my home with my husband and my girls. I will never forget it. I loved them all that much—oh desperately I loved them. So there was that as well.

William, who had really said remarkably little since the baby had been born, said to me that night, "You know, Lucy, I think I would feel better if she had been a boy." It was as though something dropped deep inside of me, and I did not say anything about it. But I have always remembered that.

But it was very strange to think that the children I had were already—in just one generation—so different, so very different, from me and what I had come from. And from what Catherine had come from as well. I don't know why this came to me with such force at that moment, but it did.

And then I remembered that one time, when I was pregnant with Chrissy, I had looked down at my big stomach and put my hand over it and thought: Whoever you are, you do not belong to me. My job is to help you get into the world, but you do not belong to me. And remembering this now, I thought: Lucy, you were absolutely right.

don't know if I believe it or not." I paused. "I don't really know anything." I added, "Except how much I love you and Becka. I know that.