Quotes About Family

A game they played, he and his mother, when he was very small. Before school, before he had any other world but her.

How had it begun? Like everything: with mothers and fathers. Because of Lydia's mother and father, because of her mother's and father's mothers and fathers. Because long ago, her mother had gone missing, and her father had brought her home. Because more than anything, her mother had wanted to stand out; because more than anything, her father had wanted to blend in. Because those things had been impossible.

Pearl, my darling," her mother said. "I'm so sorry. It's time to go." She took Mia's hand, and Pearl, uprooted, came free and followed her mother back to the car.

It would disappear forever from her memory of Lydia, the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth and simplify themselves, shedding complexities like scales. For

This baby name May Ling. Please take this baby and give her a better life. That first night, when the baby had finally fallen asleep in their laps, Mr. and Mrs. McCullough spent two hours flipping through the name dictionary. It had not occurred to them, then or at any point until now, to regret the loss of her old name.

Izzy, Mia noticed, tended to respond by needling her mother even more, pushing her buttons with the expertise only a child could. Anger is fear's bodyguard.

Finally, thank you to my son: you're still the best thing I've created.

My mom says kids only need one parent. She says if my dad doesn't care enough to see me, it's his loss, not mine.

For the rest of her life, this would be what Marilyn thought of first when she thought of her mother. Her mother, who had never left her hometown eighty miles from Charlottesville, who always wore gloves outside the house, and who never, in all the years Marilyn could remember, sent her to school without a hot breakfast

My mother just thinks I should marry someone more like me, then brushed it away, like dust onto the floor. But those words had haunted James. How they must have wound around his heart, binding tighter over the years, slicing into the flesh. He had hung his head like a murderer, as if his blood were poison, as if he regretted that their daughter had ever existed.

Lydia is dead.

How had it began? Like evrything: with mothers and fathers. Because of Lydia's mother and father, because of her mother's and father's mothers and fathers.

How had it begun? Like everything: with mothers and fathers. Because of Lydia's mother and father, because of her mother's and father's mothers and fathers.

Qualcosa in quello scambio di sguardi tra madre e figlia aveva acciuffato il cuore di Mrs Richardson come un retino per farfalle.

Quando Pearl gli chiese cosa facessero i genitori tutto il giorno, Moody si strinse nelle spalle. «Be', vanno a lavorare». A lavorare! Quando lo diceva sua madre suonava come una sfacchinata: servire ai tavoli, lavare i piatti, pulire i pavimenti. Dai Richardson quella parola aveva un che di nobile: facevano cose importanti.

She smelled, Mia thought suddenly, of home, as if home had never been a place, but had always been this little person whom she'd carried alongside her.

She'll pause over a peppermint, still twisted in cellophane, and wonder if it's significant, if it had meant something to Lydia, if it was just overlooked and discarded. She knows she'll find no answers. For now, she watches the figure in the bed, and her eyes fill with tears. It's enough.

everything on earth would be invisible. Mothers who disappeared, fathers who didn't love you, kids who mocked you—everything would shrink to pinpoints and vanish. Up there: nothing but stars.

She buried her nose in Lydia's hair and made silent promises. Never to tell her to sit up straight, to find a husband, to keep a house. Never to suggest that there were jobs or lives or worlds not meant for her; never to let her hear doctor and think only man. To encourage her, for the rest of her life, to do more than her mother had.

even before the nurses had wiped the baby clean, even before they had cut the cord—touched every part of her child, her tiny flaring nostrils and the faint shadows of her eyebrows and the womb-slicked soles of her feet, making certain she was wholly present, learning her by heart.)

Perfectly serviceable, Mrs. Richardson thought. Two bedrooms, one for the adults and one for the boys. The girls—for she was still certain Izzy would be back with them shortly—could sleep on the three-season porch. A bathroom and a half—well, they would have to share.

For as long as she could remember, Pearl had understood the hierarchy: her mother's real work was her art, and whatever paid the bills existed only to make that art possible.

Ever since that summer, he had felt something still binding their ankles and tugging him off balance, fettering her weight to his. For ten years, that something had not loosened, and now it had begun to chafe. All those years, as the only other person who understood their parents, he had absorbed her miseries, offering silent sympathy or a squeeze on a shoulder or a wry smile. [...] He had buoyed her up with how too much love was better than too little.

she'd gotten the call and had driven directly to Babies "R" Us, buying everything from a complete wardrobe to a crib to six months' supply of diapers. "Maxed out the Visa," Linda McCullough had said with a laugh. "Mark was still putting the crib together when the social worker pulled up with her. But look at her. Just look at her. Can you believe this?" She had bent over the infant cradled against her, with a look of pure astonishment.