Quotes About Family

How was your day, Rosie?" Dad would ask when he came home from work and I'd tell him it was ebullient. Or limpid. Or dodecahedron. "That's good to hear," he'd say.

Antagonism in my family comes wrapped in layers of code, sideways feints, full deniability.

There are moments when history and memory seem like a mist, as if what really happened matters less than what should have happened. The mist lifts and suddenly there we are, my good parents and their good children, their grateful children who phone for no reason but to talk, say their good-nights with a kiss, and look forward to home on the holidays. I see how, in a family like mine, love doesn't have to be earned and it can't be lost.

Because any misbehavior in a younger child was always the fault of the older. That was how a family worked.

There seemed no end to the insane things fathers did to their families.

It's true that, as my brother grew larger, he also grew dangerous, same as my sister. But they're still ours and we want them back. They're needed here at home.

Tryptophan: a chemical in turkey meat rumored to make you sleepy and careless. One of the many minefields in the landscape of the family Thanksgiving.

Nor did I respond with the obvious, that my brother might very well go to jail, probably would someday, but he would never ever call. Three words were scratched in ballpoint blue on the wall above the phone. Think a head. I thought how that was good advice, but maybe a bit late for anyone using that phone. I thought how it would be a good name for a beauty salon.

Grief had destroyed Rosalie's parents. It seemed that God had reached down and scooped out the middle of the family as casually as if he were eating a watermelon.

One Mother's Day, he gave Mom a music box that played the theme from Swan Lake. She cried for days over it.

And that right there is the difference between me and my brother—I was always afraid of being made to leave and he was always leaving.

Before, my brother was part of the family. After, he was just killing time until he could be shed of us.

No more politics, Grandma Donna had said as a permanent new rule, since we wouldn't agree to disagree and all of us had access to cutlery.

intended as a dig at my father, the enterprise being another of science's excesses, like cloning or whisking up a bunch of genes to make your own animal. Antagonism in my family comes

Instead I watched our mother obsessively for signs of breakage.

So this is what I said to Mom; this is what I meant to say - That there was something inside Fern I didn't know. That I didn't know her in the way I'd always thought I did. That Fern had secrets and not the good kind. Instead I'd said I was afraid of her. That was the lie that got her sent away.

persuade Cassie to allow his mother to have more input. Cassie

Cleaning up" consisted of each child contributing one Lego to the box, then dropping to the floor in exhaustion. The other 3,998 were mine to deal with.

What's going on? Not much. My mother's falling to pieces, my sister is a selfish bitch and my father's committing slow suicide for sake of his kingdom. That's all.

Family took a lot more than genes to hold it together

I know genes are a big deal, son, but they're not the be-all and end-all. Rob slowed to a halt at the lights, wishing the dickhead behind would back off. If they were, you'd be in a seafood salad and I'd be in prison.

didn't have a mother or a father, but a stranger willingly chose me to be his son. You had a mother and father, and they let strangers take you. No, General, don't pity me. You're the one who's had the worse deal." It was shocking and it was true. The extraordinary clarity of his assessment hit her so hard that she almost gasped. It told her things she didn't want to know about herself. None of them changed her intentions.

Fett, I have a beautiful daughter...' He shouldn't have said that. Now I'm angry, and I don't often get angry. 'Never use your kids, scumbag. Never.

Aliit ori'shya tal'din. Family is more than bloodline. —Mandalorian proverb