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Quotes About Family

Now, my mother sniffled, WERE you abducted? Kidnapped? You mean did somebody snatch me? Yes. Well? Why would anybody wanna snatch ME? Megin. Just DID they? Did who? Who's THEY? ANYBODY! Snatch you? I laughed. Jeez no! And she grabbed me again and we cried some more.
~ Jerry Spinelli
Easier to rearrange the stars than a father's mind.
~ Jerry Spinelli
but my rather said no way was he going
~ Jerry Spinelli
They were laughing and playing ball when Palmer, letting fly a long shot from beyond the bed, said, "Do you like my father?" Dorothy watched the ball bounce off the door. "What kind of question is that?" "Do you?" "Sure, why?" "Do you think he's nice?" "Yeah, don't you?" Palmer thought for a moment. "Yeah, he is. I guess that's the problem.
~ Jerry Spinelli
But she loves her daughter, David can tell, loves her the way David's mother loved him, and sometimes David feels that same love he used to, except now it's coming from other places, other people, and it's a good thing the love is coming because he's beginning to think there aren't enough rules in the universe to bring his mother back.
~ Jerry Spinelli
If it was true that women and children might become communal property, then every child would have many fathers and mothers, innumerable brothers and sisters. It seemed to be too much to hope for. To belong to everyone!
~ Jerzy Kosi?ski
A gardener! Isn't that the perfect description of what a real businessman is? A person who makes a flinty soil productive with the labor of his own hands, who waters it with the sweat of his own brow, and who creates a place of value for his family and for the community
~ Jerzy Kosi?ski
Brother fought against brother, fathers swung axes against sons in front of their mothers. An invisible force divided people, split families, addled brains. Only the elders remained sane, scurrying from one side to the other, begging the combatants to make peace. They cried in their squeaky voices that there was enough war in the world without starting one in the village.
~ Jerzy Kosi?ski
What were parents for if not to be with their children in times of danger?
~ Jerzy Kosi?ski
After that, Mrs. Hansen stopped visiting. Mom receded from a lot of my memories and Dad came in clearer focus, making breakfast in Mom's place, driving me to school on the days it rained. When Mom showed up, she was a force, sparkling at dinner parties, running around the kitchen cooking four-course dinners, but it seemed to cost her. She stayed at that level—50 percent of her—for a couple months.
~ Jess Lourey
Their family and friends are the only ones who can understand the depths of their grief, the life's work of creating meaning in loss, of having their world shaped by violence they couldn't see coming and did not deserve.
~ Jess Lourey
I hadn't meant to tell her the last bit. Sometimes Mom was fine taking in that much information. But then there were the other times. I could see her tumblers working. Her face had gone slack. The back of my neck grew cold waiting to see which version was going to erupt. But finally, happily, the correct words dropped into place, and out rolled a perfectly normal sentence. "Wonderful! Your dad and I will come see you girls play." Did she know she was lying?
~ Jess Lourey
Their four blond boys were indistinguishable except for height: John, Kyle, Kevin, and Junior. The oldest was five, and having them so close together meant their mom couldn't laugh too hard anymore or she'd accidentally pee. (She'd told me on the uncomfortable ride home.)
~ Jess Lourey
With Mom, what went up must come down, and it was a mystery what exact combination would make life too much for her.
~ Jess Lourey
I don't think you put the swear word in the right place, Grandpa," Teddy says. When Dad first came here, my boys would look shocked whenever Dad went Old-Faithful-profane, and I began to wonder if Lisa and I shouldn't swear more so Franklin and Teddy weren't so put off by curse words.
~ Jess Walter
He flushed with sadness, as if every moment of his life were occurring all at once—his sister dying in childbirth, his mother squirming in that one-room flop, poor Danny sliding between wet logs, Gig in jail, and Jules dead—and how many more? All people, except this rich cream, living and scraping and fighting and dying, and for what, nothing, the cold millions with no chance in this world.
~ Jess Walter
A hole opened up and he had to know what was inside it. So he picked and picked until the hole was huge, and then everything sort of... fell in, him, his wife, his kid, and this fragile life they'd built at the edge of this hole. And that's why he was here, because he'd begun wondering if maybe his father hadn't fallen in the same hole -
~ Jess Walter
Elena reminds him that without his dad's union job, he wouldn't have had a roof over his head, but he's one of those men of fragile confidence who needs to always believe that he's made his own way in the world.
~ Jess Walter
Maybe it's being close to the end, but I have this desire to pull Greg aside—to pull all my children aside, and my grandchildren—and to whisper something profound, to pass on the great wisdom I've acquired. Something that would open their hearts and create in them an unassailable courage, a generosity of spirit, faith in humanity.
~ Jess Walter
Alarmingly, though, on top of the bookcase there is also a family portrait of Bea with two just-as-striking blond-and-blue-eyed sisters and a pair of handsome proud Nordic parents, whose stares make me aware of the vast age difference between Bea and me, and I am profoundly ashamed to be here buying drugs in this girl's apartment. What I'd really like to do, I think, is lie down on this couch and take a nap.
~ Jess Walter
What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he is dead?
~ Jess Walter
but in Claire's mind it would always be Holly Golightly who stole her daddy. We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us.
~ Jess Walter
My dad worked for 40 years in an aluminum plant. I don't think he ever got "aluminum block.
~ Jess Walter
It's another mystery of parenting: how you can love your kids without always liking them.
~ Jess Walter