Quotes About Family

she talked in one of her memoirs of ignoring her little brother when she was supposed to be looking after him: "I liked reading a book much more than I liked looking after him (and even now I like reading a book more than I like looking after my own children...)

I had never imagined my father dying. I had never inagined my parents dying. When I told Mariah this, she said that no one ever thinks their parents will die, ever, and I had to suppress the annoyance I felt at her for once again telling me about everybody when I told her something about myself.

this whole scene of me lying in bed and reading books would drive my mother to fits of anger, for she was sure it meant I was doomed to a life of slothfulness, but as it turned out, I was only doomed to write books other people might read.

This was an incident no one ever told my brother, an incident that everyone else in my family has forgotten, except me. One day during his illness, when my mother and I were standing over him, looking at him—he was asleep and so didn't know we were doing so—I reminded my mother of the ants almost devouring him and she looked at me, her eyes narrowing in suspicion, and she said, "What a memory you have!"—perhaps the thing she most dislikes about me.

A house has a physical definition; a home has a spiritual one.

Nunca se le ha ocurrido pensar que quizá su forma de querernos no sea lo mejor para nosotros.Nunca se le ha ocurrido pensar que quizá su forma de querernos la haya beneficiado más a ella que a nosotros. ¿Y por qué iba a ser así? Quizá toda forma de amor revierta en beneficio propio. No lo sé, no lo sé.

Je suis si vulnérable aux besoins et à l'influence des membres de ma famille que de temps en temps je m'en tiens à l'écart. Je ne leur écris pas. Je ne leur rends pas visite. Je ne mens pas, je ne nie pas, je me tiens seulement à l'écart.

For my mother would never come to see that perhaps my needs were more important than her wishes.

In the past, the thought of being in my present situation had been a comfort, but now I did not even have this to look forward to, and so I lay down on my bed and dreamt I was eating a bowl of pink mullet and green figs cooked in coconut milk, and it had been cooked by my grandmother, which was why the taste of it pleased me so, for she was the person I liked best in all the world and those were the things I like best to eat also.

I said that she had acted like a saint, but that since I was living in this real world I had really wanted just a mother.

Lucy, a girl's name for Lucifer. That my mother would have found me devil-like did not surprise me, for I often thought of her as god-like, and are not the children of gods devils? I did not grow to like the name Lucy-I would have much preferred to be called Lucifer outright-but whenever I saw my name I always reached out to give it a strong embrace.

Hunsucker chewed at a lump of gum like it had done his family wrong.

But he did not ask, and his uncle did not speak except to say, after a few minutes, "It's time to go home," and all the way home they walked in silence.

her mother came toward her stooping with her arms stretched out and Catherine ran to her as fast as she could run, and plunged her head into her, and cried as if she were made only of tears...

That horrid little man!" "What's wrong with him?" his father asked, not because he didn't know what she would say, but so she would say it.

He felt that although his father loved their home and loved all of them, he was more lonely than the contentment of this family love could help; that it even increased his loneliness, or made it hard for him not to be lonely.

he still thought I was accusing him or calling him to account. He said, "People *do* grow. You may not think much of *me*, but my children will be great!" I said , "They will be black and blind or passing for white and self-blinded. Those are the only choices.

He remembered another one of his mother's saying. It was back when she'd birthed Fanny, her tenth. Someone had siad it was about time she gave up mothering and rested. "Nay," she had said. "I've started something, and now I wouldn't stop if I could, and I couldn't stop if I would.

Stick with the people who love you and don't spend a single second on the rest. Life will be better that way.

Big Angel had never noticed his mother's endowment before. Suddenly, she seemed to be blessed with an expanse of pillowy flesh. And she tucked the parrot into that cleavage, adjusting herself as it sank from view, finishing the operation by using her thumb on its head to get it well positioned in the shadows. She adjusted her bust and said, "Let's go to San Diego, boys!

Back at the house. How could you end a whole era and bury a century of life and be home before suppertime? Big Angel could not reconcile himself to this dirty deal they had all been dealt. Death. What a ridiculous practical joke. Every old person gets the punch line that the kids are too blind to see. All the striving, lusting, dreaming, suffering, working, hoping, yearning, mourning, suddenly revealed itself to be an accelerating countdown to nightfall.

Big Angel was late to his own mother's funeral.

The whole family had inherited the bizarre belief system of Antonio and América: instant coffee was some kind of miracle.

Big Angel didn't speak, just beamed like some small lighthouse.