Quotes About Family

We expect and demand people to maintain bonds with family. It doesn't matter whether you love or hate your relatives, even ones you've legally divorced. As long as there are children involved, you stick together.

With my family, historical facts are subsidiary to narrative, and narrative must always show the narrator in the best light.

I thought about my family. It was small by any standard, shrunken to a handful by Hitler, Stalin, and divorce.

Do not fall in love with someone when that love is heavily dependent on the goodwill and kindness of your parents.

When I got married in my twenties, I had a happy marriage and happy kids but at some point in time I let it go off the rails I let it go off the rails.

my home; it would be comforting to know you are there. Manolo and the

We sent him to school for him to take this heavy equipment. I worked and cooked over at the school, helped send him there. I said, "I'm not sendin' you to school to come out here and go to work for these strip mines." I'd rather see him in Vietnam than see him doin' strip jobs.

You try to fill up your time with trying to think about other things: what you're going to do on the weekend or about your family. You have to use your imagination. If you don't have a very good one and you bore easily, you're in trouble. Just to fill in time, I write real bad poetry or letters to myself and to other people and never mail them. The letters are fantasies, sort of rambling, how I feel, how depressed I am.

Usually when I'm stressed, I'll eat everything not nailed down. Only small children and family pets are safe. And okra—I won't eat okra under any circumstances.

dozing into her book, so I went into her room and pulled open the bottom drawer where she kept the old family album. Lots of pictures of Mom and me in there, because Dad was

Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right - a chilling thought when you sit down to dinner with a family of five. All those potential killers passing their plates.

Gran! Gran?' yelled Jess, racing upstairs. She looked everywhere. Nothing. No aged person. Only Rasputin, looking startled and disapproving. 'Where's Gran, Rasputin? For goodness' sake! Have you eaten her?' cried Jess. Rasputin looked shocked and innocent.

I swear it's true. If I lie to you, may I be changed into a sofa belonging to a fat family addicted to daytime TV and baked beans." (Fred to Jess)

Well, to be honest Dad, I think he's a little bit like you. Sort of useless, and amusing." (Jess regarding Fred)

My sister and I were the ones in the family who had seen this as necessary; neither of my brothers felt there was a problem with Dad. And in general when I'd expressed my concern for him, she was the one of my siblings who responded. She and I had also been the ones who sorted through and distributed mother's possessions after she had died.

The most significant gifts are the ones most easily overlooked. Small, everyday blessings: woods, health, music, laughter, memories, books, family, friends, second chances, warm fireplaces, and all the footprints scattered throughout our days.

You can go other places, all right - you can live on the other side of the world, but you can't ever leave home

Divorce is now normal (quoted in the Sun, 1992)

If you're about to become a stepmother or are currently filling that role, you are gambling that the love you've found and the strength and wisdom that you've acquired will see you through.

And, December 24, he collapsed, and three days later he lost consciousness. His weeks of recovery were not helped by his mother nagging him to keep up his Greek. He was beginning to admit to his friends that he did not like his mother and his sister's voice grated on his nerves. He was always ill when he was with them. He avoided quarrels and conflict; he felt he knew how to handle them but it did not agree with him to have to do so.

He visited Robert Schumann's grave to lay a wreath and he became so indebted by the purchase of a piano that he could not afford the journey home to his mother and sister at Christmas. Observing that his money always ran out fast, 'probably because it was so round', he sent in his place a volume of eight of his musical compositions...

I married two weeks after my 18th birthday, far too young, and by the time I was 23 I was a single mother of three small children, Sean, Daniel and Victoria, living in a prefab house.

At four o'clock I had one of those rare moments of happiness that I will remember all my life. I was sitting in front of Grandma's electric coal fire eating dripping toast and reading the News of the World. There was a good play on Radio Four about torturing in concentration camps. Grandma was asleep and the dog was being quiet. All at once I felt this dead good feeling. Perhaps I am turning religious. I think I have got it in me to be a Saint of some kind.

I remembered my resolution about helping the poor and ignorant today, so I took some of my old Beano annuals to a quite poor family who have moved into the next street. I know they are poor because they have only got a black and white telly. A boy answered the door. I explained why I had come. He looked at the annuals and said, 'I've read 'em,' and slammed the door in my face. So much for helping the poor!