Quotes About Family

A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.

Children are natural mimics; they act like their parents in spite of every effort to teach them good manners.

Too often, we try to extort from chosen others the fierce genetic loyalty we long for from our parents and feel for our kids. The fact is, even though our individual DNAs may conjoin to form a zygote and in due time a unique, freestanding being, we remain literally and existentially separate, our union perfect only apart from ourselves.

Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.

Mahad had done wrong, but I had been unforgivably trusting, which meant I was fatally dense. I had failed to be suspicious. I deserved my grandma's scorn. I was not allowed to talk back to Grandma, and Ma said nothing to defend me. I could only sob, and seethe.

This move is called Qworegoys, and the women of my grandmother's family taught it to their daughters just as they taught them to make thorn-bush fences to protect the hut from hyenas.

I can well remember how when someone in my family lay sick or dying—like my aunt when she contracted breast cancer—the Qur'an was chanted by the bedside, in the belief that its words alone would cure the patient. Analogies with Christian prayer are misleading because the reciter of the Qur'an is voicing God's words, not appealing to God for intercession.

Abeh would always protest, and quote the Quran: "Paradise is at the feet of your mother!" But when we looked down at them, our mother's bare feet were cracked from washing the floor every day, and Abeh's were clad in expensive Italian leather shoes.

Most unmarried Somali girls who got pregnant committed suicide. I knew of one girl in Mogadishu who poured a can of gasoline over herself in the living room, with everyone there, and burned herself alive. Of course, if she hadn't done this, her father and brothers would probably have killed her anyway.

I pity the young woman who will attempt to insinuate herself between my mama's boy and me. I sympathize with the monumental nature of her task. It will take a crowbar, two bulldozers and half a dozen Molotov cocktails to pry my Oedipus and me loose from one another.

So many women today have become so focused on their children, they've developed these romantic entanglements with their children's lives, and the husbands are secondary. They're left out. And the romantic focus is on the children.

As a novelist, I mined my history, my family and my memory, but in a very specific way. Writing fiction, I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory, mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.

Before I was married, I didn't consider my failure to manage even basic hand tools a feminist inadequacy. I thought it had more to do with being Jewish. The Jews I knew growing up didn't do 'do-it-yourself.' When my father needed to hammer something he generally used his shoe, and the only real tool he owned was a pair of needle-nose pliers.

Personally, I think four is the perfect number of children for our particular family. Four is enough to create the frenzied cacophony that my husband and I find so joyful.

By the time the children go to bed, I am as drained as any mother who has spent her day working, car pooling, building Lego castles and shopping for the precisely correct soccer cleat.

Is Valentine's Day a day to make cupcakes with your children? No, Valentine's is supposed to be a day about romantic love.

Coming home.

If they wanted to know why she had tried to go, why were they asking about the "Islamic thoughts" in her head? Didn't they realize a naïve, broken-bird of a girl might follow a beloved brother to the very ends of the earth? Didn't they realize abused girls were easy prey for charismatic men with dubious intentions?

Behavior that had in the past been acceptable—being in contact with your family, being on the internet when you weren't supposed to—was suddenly grounds for intense suspicion. Not fighting was not an option. Not fighting other Syrian rebel groups, composed of Sunni Muslims, was not an option. Being a private citizen who stayed at home was not an option. The only option left to her looked to be escape.

The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn't know how other people would take it.

Growing up, I was taught that a man has to defend his family. When the wolf is trying to get in, you gotta stand in the doorway.

Nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jivin', too.

Nobody loves me but mama, and she may be jivin too.

What will your family think, me showing up on their doorstep with my suitcase in hand?" "I'll carry your suitcase," he said.