Quotes About Family

Hugo, child, have I ever said that I loved you? Do you know that your fists are clenched? You aren't going to strike me-' She had smiled. Then he had burst into tears. He had never mentioned love either, but it had not occurred to him that it might not be identical with what they had enjoyed.

I have a very open line of communication with both my children.

Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.

I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing.

Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described - and will be, after our deaths - by each of the family members who believe they know us.

The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.

Long before all these divisions were opened between home and the road, betweens a woman's place and a man's world, humans followed the crops, the seasons, traveling with their families, our companions, animals, our tents. We built campfires and moved from place to place. This way of traveling is still in our cellular memory. Living things have evolved as travelers, Even migrating birds know that nature doesn't demand a choice between nesting and flight.

Happy or Unhappy, families are all mysterious.

However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four. However far it may expand, the progression inevitably rests on unequal power and airtight roles within the family.

But why didn't you leave? Why didn't you take my sister and go to New York?" she would say it didn't matter, that she was lucky to have my sister and me. If I pressed hard enough, she would add, "If I'd left, you never would have been born." I never had the courage to say: But you would have been born instead.

My father did not have to trade dying alone for the joys of the road. My mother did not have to give up a journey of her own to have a home. Neither do I. Neither do you.

Only after I saw women who were attracted to distant, condescending, even violent men did I begin to understand that having a distant, condescending, even violent father could make those qualities seem inevitable, even feel like home. Because of my father, only kindness felt like home.

a crucial purpose of birth families is to make sure we know, value, and even love people we don't agree with.

I sometimes wonder if I am crisscrossing my father's ghostly paths and we are entering same towns or roadside diners or the black ribbons of highways that gleam in the night rain. As if we were images in a time-lapse photograph.

Learning to accept and even love difference, as she pointed out, is important for the future of the human race. There is great comfort in realizing that differences within a family have an important purpose.

Nor was he around when I finally understood that having a loving and nurturing father made a lifetime of difference. Only after I saw women who were attracted to distant, condescending, even violent men did I begin to understand that having a distant, condescending, even violent father could make those qualities seem inevitable, even feel like home. Because of my father, only kindness felt like home.

All I knew was that my father enjoyed my company, asked my opinion, and treated me better than he treated himself. What more could any child want?

There are rock-bottom subjects for men as well as women. If there is one that men want to talk about most, it's how much they missed having nurturing fathers, or any man in their lives who cared.

In short, these rebels punished their families, but only in the traditionally feminine way: they punished themselves.

If I pressed and said, "But why didn't you leave? Why didn't you take my sister and go to New York?" she would say it didn't matter, that she was lucky to have my sister and me. If I pressed hard enough, she would add, "If I'd left, you never would have been born." I never had the courage to say: But you would have been born instead.

Emotional security, continuity, a sense of being loved unconditionally for oneself—all those turn out to be as important to a child's development as all but the most basic food and shelter.

The accusation that feminism is bad for the family leads to understanding that it's bad for the patriarchal variety, but good for democratic families that are the basis of democracy.

When I was little I thought, isn't it nice that everybody celebrates on my birthday? Because it's July 4th.