Quotes About Family

He lived his spiritual life without any communion with others, visiting his relatives at Christmas and escorting them to the cemetery when they died. He performed these two social duties for old dignity's sake but conceded nothing further to the conventions which regulate the civic life.

Is the brother with you, Malachi? —Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons. —Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her. —Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.

Dammad and Groany, into her limited (tuff, tuff, que tu es pitre!) lapse at the same slapse for towelling ends in their dolightful Sexsex home, (...)

Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's shirts.

But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you... (Joyce, Ulysses)

his mother?

A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.

The sad quiet greyblue glow of the dying day came through the window and the open door, covering over and allaying quietly a sudden instinct of remorse in Stephen's heart. All that had been denied them had been freely given to him, the eldest: but the quiet glow of evening showed him in their faces no sign of rancour.

He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather.

My father, your son, was, is, a man who truly cherishes life. Yes, he is, Alice whispered. I hope he got it... from me.

John Kennedy's family was rich, and he had enjoyed all the privileges that money could buy — a fine Harvard education, world travel, material possessions, leisure, and his father's contacts.

Both Davis and Lincoln loved books and reading. Both had children who died young. One of Davis's sons, Samuel, died when he was still a baby, and another, Joseph, died after an accident while Davis was the president of the Confederacy. Lincoln, too, lost one son, Eddie, at a very young age and another, Willie, his favorite, while he was president of the United States.

All drunks, particularly those who grew up in alcoholic homes, have that same sense of angst and trepidation, one that has no explainable origins. The fear is not necessarily self-centered, either. It's like watching someone point a revolver at his temple while he cocks and dry-fires the mechanism, over and over again, until the cylinder rotates a loaded chamber into firing position.

We all have an extended family, people whom we recognize as our own as soon as we see them.

If anyone tells you he's from New Orleans and doesn't drink, he's probably not from New Orleans. Louisiana is not a state; it's an outdoor mental asylum in which millions of people stay bombed most of their lives. That's not an exaggeration. Cirrhosis is a family heirloom.

Prosecutors often wince when they have to take a child abuser to trial, because usually the only witnesses they can use are children who are terrified at the prospect of testifying against their parents.

it can reach a murderous intensity within minutes over a betrayed trust, a lie, a wrong against a family member.

I wished life consisted of just taking care of animals, the earth, and one's family and friends. In fact, that's what it should be. But it's not, and the explanation for that fact is not one I have ever been able to provide.

Alcoholism is not a disease here but a venerated family heirloom.

IF YOU ARE a parent, you know the following to be true: Even though your child has grown into adulthood, you never see the man or the woman; you see only the little boy or the little girl.

Sometimes the father poured a sack full of dry rice on the floor and made Clete kneel on the kernels until sunrise; sometimes he sat on the side of the bed and gently touched Clete's face with a hand that was as callused as a carpenter's; sometimes he lay down beside Clete and wept as a child would.

James Lee Burke

If you grow up in an alcoholic home, you learn a lesson that never leaves you: The need to satisfy the addiction comes first; everything else is secondary. Daily betrayal becomes a way of life. We

He scraped a pork chop and two eggs out of the frying pan and slid them off the spatula onto a plate. "You sure you don't want any?" "You know how much grease is in that stuff?" "That's why I've never had problems with arthritis. The grease in your food oils your joints and your connective tissue. Nobody in my family has ever had arthritis." "Because they didn't live long enough," I replied.