Quotes About Family

Ammu shook her and told her to Stoppit and she Stoppited.

She described how, when her brother's body was found in a field and brought home, his fists, clenched in rigor mortis, were full of earth and yellow mustard flowers grew from between his fingers.

Somehow the idea of dictating things, Tilo said, seemed to make her mother feel that she was still the captain of the ship, still in charge of something, and that calmed her down considerably.

For the Time Being they had no surname because Ammu was considering reverting to her maiden name, though she said that choosing between her husband's name and her fathers name didn't give a woman much of a choice.

She thought of Chacko's laugh, and a smile stayed in her eyes for a long time.

Ese era el problema con los parientes. Al igual que los médicos aviesos, sabían dónde hacer más daño al tocar.

She was buried right next to her mother, Begum Arifa Yeswi. Mother and daughter died by the same bullet. It entered Miss Jebeen's head through her left temple and came to rest in her mother's heart. In the last photograph of her, the bullet wound looked like a cheerful summer rose arranged just above her left ear. A few petals had fallen on her kaffan, the white shroud she was wrapped in before she was laid to rest.

Half an hour past midnight. Death came for him. And for the little family curled up and asleep on a blue cross-stitch counterpane? What came for them? Not death Just the end of living. (304)

It was the kind of time in the life of a family when something happens to nudge its hidden morality from its resting place and make it bubble to the surface and float for a while. In clear view.

In her growing years, Ammu had watched her father weave his hideous web. He was charming and urbane with visitors...He donated money to orphanages and leprosy clinics. He worked hard on his public profile as a sophisticated, generous, moral man. But alone with his wife and children he turned into a monstrous, suspicious bully, with a steak of vicious cunning. They were beaten, humiliated, and then made to suffer the envy of friends and relations for having such a wonderful husband and father.

their English aunt, Margaret Kochamma—and their cousin, Sophie Mol, who were coming from London to spend Christmas at Ayemenem.

Her tolerance of "Men's Needs," as far as her son was concerned, became the fuel for her unmanageable fury at her daughter.

Over coffee Mr. Hollick proposed that Babà go away for a while. For a holiday. To a clinic perhaps, for treatment. For as long as it took him to get better. And for the period of time that he was away, Mr. Hollick suggested that Ammu be sent to his bungalow to be "looked after.

children, and the war with Pakistan began, Ammu left her husband and returned, unwelcomed, to her parents in Ayemenem.

Estha thought you were dying." "You looked so sad," Estha said. "I was happy," Ammu said, and realized that she had been.

They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and jelly jelly. It was a time when uncles became fathers, mothers lovers, and cousins died and had funerals. It was a time when the unthinkable became thinkable and the impossible really happened.

The end was nigh. She had been waiting for her father to die so her life could begin, but as we could all have told her it doesn't work like that. She knew that anyway. Really.

Your chances of avoiding the nursing home are directly related to the number of children you have

The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society.

assisted living isn't really built for the sake of older people so much as for the sake of their children.

Modernization did not demote the elderly. It demoted the family.

We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love.

When my father met her, he was surprised to learn she lived by herself. He was a urologist, which meant he saw many elderly patients, and it always bothered him to find them living alone. The way he saw it, if they didn't already have serious needs, they were bound to develop them, and coming from India he felt it was the family's responsibility to take the aged in, give them company, and look after them.

But death is not a subject that his doctors, friends, or family can countenance. That is what causes him his most profound pain.