Quotes About Family

They were not children. They had grown into people he knew little about. And they had done so without his help or influence, or even,--for the most part--his witness. It made him feel as though something precious had been taken from him.

I love my brother Robbie, but not enough to save him. I love my sister Katie, but I've learned to do it from a distance. This is how we grow. Have you noticed that? This is what we call loving each other. No wonder we have wars.

The thing about a family is the love. The 'what kind?' and 'how will it work?' is nothing. That's just a thing you worry about before you learn that those details aren't what matter at all.

I knew better than to believe a family was anything like the ones you saw on TV, and my own experience was disaster oriented at almost all times, but I knew—if only from the family I'd begun to form with Sean and Maya—that there was such a thing as people functioning together. Maybe not every minute of every day, but long enough to form a decent holiday. Maybe even a decent life.

Sons get bigger and bigger and turn into grownups, but you still call them your son.

That's the thing about mothers. If you're close, you don't want to lose that closeness, though I don't know from personal experience. If you're not, you harbor this little thread of hope that you will be someday, and you don't want to be told you've just run out of time.

She half stood, half floated in the water, absorbing the totality of Lance and Neal having so much shared history. So much life with each other that Roseanna knew nothing about. It felt as though someone had been watching her through one-way mirrored glass while staying safely anonymous and hidden himself. It also meant there was a great deal of her son's life that she had missed, but that much she'd known already. It just hurt to get a good look at it in retrospect.

I said, "You know, Pat, you're more like my mother than my mother is." She said, "Well, it works like that sometimes. Blood family, that's something we get dealt. Sometimes we get a bad hand. Not much way around it. You just have to grow up and get more family. The kind you get to pick out yourself.

I was wondering if Chester was going to have any kind of memorial. I figured probably not. Clearly his sons wanted nothing to do with him. Ellie was a new grandmother, and not wanting to travel. And who else was there? Obviously no one, or I wouldn't have been roped into taking over his care. It felt like the best possible advertisement for kindness. Treat people well, otherwise you might die and no one will notice or find it especially relevant to their life.

That gold star in the window. The symbol for a lost son. It broke you down.

wanted to say, "Be kind to each other, and don't let anybody come between you. And if someone else does come in and break up the marriage, and there's no way around that, at least find a way to equitably share the raising of the children.

Danger lurks along the paths walked by our children and their parents. If they are to safely negotiate the journey with increasing strength and sensitivity and without suffering debilitating wounds, then wise, committed companions must join them on the way.

Children form their image of God in the context of relating to their parents and other significant adults.

God did not intend for a father and a mother to shoulder the full load of child rearing without the support of an extended family and a faith community. Will our faith communities connect with young people and become an extended family for them?

I know you loved both he and I, the way a mother can love two sons. And no one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough.

As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits.

At the snowy summit of all these things, however, is the fact that you simply cannot go about locking your siblings in towers when they misbehave. It is unseemly and betrays a sad lack of creativity.

Marya Morevna, we are better at this than you are. We can hold two terrible ideas at once in our hearts. Never have your folk delighted us more, been more like family. For a devil, hypocrisy is a parlour game, like charades. Such fun, and when the evening is done we shall be holding our bellies to keep from dying of laughter.

I abandoned her. It's the one capital crime of fatherhood. Mothers can fail a thousand different ways. A father's only job is: do not abandon this child.

Still, I did love him. He never minded if I wore my pyjamas for a week and didn't brush my hair. That's a good quality to have in a man. Maybe the best a girl could hope for, considering. And, by Jove, he loves that child. Did you know you can fall in love with the way a man loves someone else? Love takes so much effort. You have to get up ever so early in the morning to really love someone properly.

You'll forgive the flowery talk, won't you? Our family does so love to be told they are beautiful. Vanity is an old and venerable habit.

Didn't you know? All stepmothers are witches. It is our compensation for remaining forever an intruder in another woman's house.

You're grown--crooked and backbent, but grown--and it's time to stop hanging your heart on your mother.

Hats change everything. September knew this with all her being, deep in the place where she knew her own name, that her mother would still love her even though she hadn't waved good-bye. For one day, her father had put on a hat with golden things on it and suddenly he hadn't been her father anymore, he had been a soldier, and he had left. Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.