Quotes About Family

Some of my relatives held on to imagined memories the way homeless people hold onto lottery tickets. Nostalgia was their crack cocaine, if you will, and my childhood was littered with the consequences of their addiction : unserviceable debts, squabbles over inheritances, the odd alcoholic or suicide.

I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost.

The gun of the father is always the undoing of the son.

In the history of the evolution of the family, you and the millions of other migrants like you represent an ongoing proliferation of the nuclear. It is an explosive transformation, the supportive, stifling, stabilizing bonds of extended relationships weakening and giving way, leaving in their wake insecurity, anxiety, productivity, and potential.

and in any case Nadia had taken one look at Saeed's father and felt him like a father, for he was so gentle, and evoked in her a protective caring, as if for one's own child, or for a puppy, or for a beautiful memory one knows has already commenced to fade.

You're so beautiful," her mother said as she was leaving. "You should get a gun.

Saeed prayed a great deal, and so did his father, and so did their guests, and some of them wept, but Saeed had wept only once, when he first saw his mother's corpse and screamed, and Saeed's father wept only when he was alone in his room, silently, without tears, his body seized as though by a stutter, or a shiver, that would not let go, for his sense of loss was boundless, and his sense of the benevolence of the universe was shaken, and his wife had been his best friend.

The arc of a child's life only appears for a while to match the arc of a parent's, in reality one sits atop the other, a hill atop a hill, a curve atop a curve. His arc now needed to curve lower while his son's still curved higher.

and you are ready, ready to die well, ready to die like a man, like a woman, like a human, for despite all else you have loved, you have loved your father and your mother and your brother and your sister and your son and, yes, your ex-wife and you have loved the pretty girl, you have been beyond yourself, and so you have courage, and you have ...

and in any case Nadia had taken one look at Saeed's father and felt him like a father, for he was so gentle, and evoked in her a protective caring, as if for one's own child, or for a puppy, or for a beautiful memory one know has already commenced to fade.

The old woman had become a rich woman on paper, the house now worth a fortune, and her children were always pestering her to sell it, saying she didn?t need all that space. But she told them to be patient, it would be theirs when she died, which wouldn?t be long now, and she said this kindly, to sharpen the bite of it, and to remind them how much they were motivated by money

The old woman had become a rich woman on paper, the house now worth a fortune, and her children were always pestering her to sell it, saying she didn't need all that space. But she told them to be patient, it would be theirs when she died, which wouldn?t be long now, and she said this kindly, to sharpen the bite of it, and to remind them how much they were motivated by money

Anders knew he would soon lose his father, and that impending loss seemed more concrete now, more real, not like air but like a door or a wall, something you could bang against, bang into, and of course children know they will lose their parents, they know it from early on, but most are able to believe that that particular present will not come, that it is years away....

I wish I was as old as my parents. Or as young as my son. I wish it didn't have to be me telling my wife to stay where she is, saying everything will be fine in a voice she doesn't believe and I don't believe either.

In Pakistan, my friends and family are frightened, as they should be when the

PARENTS FIRST MET they were

Too many times I'd left him reaching for me, from a babysitter's arms. Am I still a mother? I asked myself... What parts of the day could I cut out and still give him enough? Paul never asked himself that. He thought he was a great dad.

The way Eli looked at her, my dad looked at the food.

A mother's happiness; something you recognize and then forget; it didn't seem to matter much, though it spread through our bodies.

He thought about Lina saying she was like their mom. She was scared that it would happen to her. There was something tentative about his sister; he wasn't like that. His mother must have somehow given him a confidence that she didn't have herself. Still, Lina was an artist. That took courage. He'd made a bargain with life. He'd spend his time gaining the ease they'd once needed. His kids could be artists. He hoped they would be.

She would have loved to be able to hate her mother the way they did, with a breeziness carried by a fundamental trust in a home with a set table and dinner cooking.

Still, Walter had never contended with their mother the way she had. He hadn't been there for the worst of it. And their mother had always been different with him. Lina desperately wanted not to become her. Walter never for a second even considered that he could.

Nishi's sister, who was sixteen years old, had gone for a holiday in Sylhet and returned six months later with a husband and a swelling belly. Nishi, strong on forward-planning skills, was taking evasive action: she was going on a holiday of her own and she would return when she was twenty-five. At that ancient age the danger of marriage was over.

Ma," said Yasmin. She hesitated. "Will you tell me properly about… how you met Baba? How you knew you wanted to marry him." Anisah turned to a tomato plant and began snipping and plucking. "I don't know. What can I tell you? I don't know." "Did you ever have any doubts?" "Things were very difficult," said Ma, elaborating further with some intricate head movements.