Quotes About Family

at some level you remain an orphan for life; looking after children is one way of looking after yourself.

nothing, no one, beyond family reunions, near-weekly

At times this biography made him comfortably nostalgic for a verdant, horse-drawn, affectionate England; at others he was faintly depressed by the way a whole life could be contained by a few hundred pages - bottled, like homemade chutney. And by how easily an existence, its ambitions, networks of family and friend, all its cherished stuff, solidly possessed, could so entirely vanish.

It's in me alone that my parents forever mingle, sweetly, sourly, along separate sugar-phosphate backbones, the recipe for my essential self. I also blend John and Trudy in my daydreams—like every child of estranged parents, I long to remarry them, this base pair, and so unite my circumstances to my genome.

She had not thought it would be so easy to slip into the old roles. Cambridge had changed her fundamentally and she thought she was immune. No one in her family, however, noticed the transformation in her, and she was not able to resist the power of their habitual expectations.

surroundings embarrass him. Visits from his children seem to precipitate nasty scenes and so, by degrees, he joins that sorry legion of passive men who abandon their children in order to placate their second wives. Easier too to attend weekly church services

She had returned from Cambridge with a vague notion that her family was owed an uninterrupted stretch of her company.

Briony was her last, and nothing between now and the grave would be as elementally important or pleasurable as the care of a child.

They would also need to talk sense to her. The almost-existing children, the husky-voiced daughter, a museum curator perhaps, and the gifted, less settled son, good at too many things, who failed to complete his university course, but a far better pianist than she. Both always affectionate, brilliant at Christmases and summer-holiday castles and entertaining their youngest relations.

If I can't get along with the father of my children, how can the world make progress?

So what's the use of a headache, a heartache? What am I being warned against, or told what to do? Don't let your incestuous uncle and mother poison your father. Don't waste your precious days idle and inverted. Get born and act!

In her uncomfortable position, his mother cocked her head on one side as she prepared to listen. It was a habit Stephen himself had adopted. He could see their faces, the lined expressions of tenderness and anxiety. It was the aging, the essential selves enduring while the bodies withered away. He felt the urgency of contracting time, of unfinished business. There were conversations he had not yet had with them and for which he had always thought there would be time.

It is difficult to step outside the moment on any given day and ask the unnecessary, essential question, or to realize that however familiar, parents are also strangers to their children.

He really believes that to write a poem in praise of my mother (her eyes, her hair, her lips) and come by to read it aloud will soften her, make him welcome in his own house.

He was a lovely boy who was a long way from his family and he was about to die.

We're family. We raise our glasses. Cheers!

He had reached that point—late thirties was common—when one's parents set off on their downhill journey. Up until that time they had owned whoever they were, whatever they did. Now, little bits of their lives were beginning to fall away or fly off suddenly like the shattered wing mirror from the Major's car. Then larger parts came away and needed to be gathered or caught mid-air by their children. It was a slow process. Ten

But he also emphasized that they should arrange their personal affairs and write letters to their families, "just in case some of us don't get back.

Yes, I'm too mad to punish you right now. We'll talk about it when we get home. Go brush your teeth, comb your hair, put on dry clothes, and get the guns. We're going to Wal-Mart.

What happened to the alpha-wolf? LEGOs. Legos? It sounded Greek but I couldn't recall anything mythological with that name. Wasn't it an island? He was carrying a load of laundry into the basement and tripped on the old set of LEGOs his kids left on the stairs. Broke two ribs and an ankle.

I make a bad mom, but I can pull off a crazy aunt.

Curran shrugged and pulled me back to him. 'You don't pick the family you're born into. You pick the one you make. I already chose my mate and glued her ass to the chair to make sure she knew it.

Your sword is made out of your grandmother's bones?" "Okay, I see how it sounds weird when you say it in that tone of voice

Go home, kiss your wives, hug your children and put your affairs in order, because tomorrow I will burn your neighborhood to the ground. We will kill you, your families, your neighbors, your pets, and anyone who will stand in our path. An attack on my family will not go unpunished.