Quotes About Family

The children had become wriggly and giggly, almost as if they were drunk. They seemed unable to sit still. They were sliding of their chairs, constantly knocking cutlery onto the floor, and talking in high-pitched voices over the top of one another. Alice didn't know if this was normal behavior or not. It wasn't exactly relaxing. Nick had his jaw clenched, as if this dinner were a horrible medical procedure he had to endure.

love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best—well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.

The cycles of dysfunction and mental illness did not have to carry over from generation to generation. You just had to educate yourself. Erika

admit it to her dad, who would just take what she said at face value, rather than her mother, who would listen too intently and empathetically and filter everything through her own emotions.

It occurred to Jacob that a man who could take such pleasure in watching someone else's children compete in a backyard tennis match would probably have quite liked at least one athletic child of his own, rather than the two uncoordinated, academic kids he got. It said something about his dad that it had taken Jacob thirty-four years for that thought to occur to him.

Her cup size didn't suit either her personality or profession but she was descended from a long line of short, acerbic, busty women, and so this was her lot.

You want me to do the gutters?' Logan had said. Climate change. His mother threw certain phrases around at random to make sure they knew she was up to date with current affairs and listened to podcasts.

Her mother specialized in the tiny razor-sharp dig wrapped in a soft compliment, so you didn't notice the blood until afterward.

Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best—well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It

You think the world begins and ends with you and your perfect little family and your perfect little life and you think stress is finding the perfectly color-coordinated cushions for your new $10,000 sofa.

Joy and Stan used to exchange smiles as their ponytailed daughter glided back and forth across the court, when she was maybe eight or nine, back when she had a "funny little personality" not "a possible mental illness." (Joy never forgave the GP who wrote that particular referral letter.)

He hated Harry for dumping his father even more than he hated him for cheating.

there was something in your children that could bring out the child in yourself.

Veronika had accused her father of being a misogynist and Thomas had told Veronika to stop acting like a pseudo lesbian intellectual.

Nick explained that an aperitif was a predinner drink. Nick came from an aperitif-drinking family. Alice came from a family with one dusty bottle of Baileys sitting hopefully in the back of the pantry behind the tins of spaghetti.

After we left the hospital this afternoon, Mum and I went over to Alice's place to meet Ben and the kids. We all had pizza for dinner. (Thankfully Roger had a Rotary meeting; I was not in the mood for Roger. I can't think of anyone ever being in the mood for Roger, except for Mum, presumably, and Roger, of course.) We didn't tell the children that Alice had lost her memory. We just said she'd hit her head at the gym but she was going to be fine.

That's true," she'd said, amazed and terrified by the thought. A toddler: an actual miniature person, created by them, belonging to them, separate from them.

Their children had bound them together in a way that she knew didn't always happen to other couples. Sharing stories about their children—laughing about them, wondering about their futures—was one of the greatest pleasures of her marriage. She'd married John-Paul because of the father she knew he would one day be.

It made Alice sick with guilt when she thought about what they had put the children through that year. She and Nick had been so young, so full of the earth-shattering importance of their own feelings.

He'd forgotten how you had to up your volume when all the Delaneys were together.

family life could be so dramatic

The risk of upsetting Stan outweighed the risk of upsetting Amy. The risk of upsetting Stan had always outweighed the risk of upsetting any of the children. Nearly always.

When he first met her odd, detached parents he understood that Heather had grown up starved of love, and when you're starved of something you should receive in abundance, you never quite trust it.

Grandmothers died. It was to be expected. You weren't even allowed to be that upset about it. Please don't let Frannie have died. Please don't let anyone have died. "Nobody else in our family will