Quotes About Family

He takes them in his hands; he meets their steady gazes; he looks into their identical eyes; he arranges them, head to foot, upon his knee; he watches as one takes the thumb of the other into its mouth and sucks upon it; he sees that the pair have led a life together that began before anything else. He touches their heads with both of his palms. You, he says, and you.

She gets hold of the wooden gatepost and grips it with both hands. Everything is shattered but holding on to this post feels like the best course of action, the only thing to do. If she can stay here, at the gate, with her daughters on one side of her and her son on the other, she can hold everything together.

fishing lines, towards her children, reminding herself of where they are, what they are doing, how they fare. From habit, while she sits there near the fireplace, some part of her mind is tabulating them and their

There is so much to do in a family of this size, so much to see to, so many people needing so many different things. How easy is it, Agnes thinks, as she lifts the plates, to miss the pain and anguish of one person, if that person keeps quiet, if he keeps it all in, like a bottle stoppered too tightly, the pressure inside building and building, until – what?

In an odd way, we no longer seemed like a family, just a collection of people living in different rooms.

She wouldn't let them take Hugo. They had to prise him from her. It took her father and a man they'd got from somewhere. Her mother stood by the window until it was all over.

Children's] lives start long before birth, long before conception, and if they are aborted or miscarried or simply fail to materialise at all, they become ghosts in our lives . . . The unborn, whether they're named or not, whether or not they're acknowledged, have a way of insisting: a way of making their presence felt.

She wouldn't let go of the baby,' her grandmother says suddenly. 'Who?' Iris pounces. 'Esme?' Her grandmother's eyes are focused somewhere beyond the window. 'They had to sedate her. She wouldn't let go.

Aged sixteen, is what she sees first. Then: Insists on keeping her hair long. Iris reads the whole document from beginning to end, then goes back and reads it again. It ends with: Parents report finding her dancing before a mirror, dressed in her mother's clothes.

The grandmother was waiting in the parlour. She had on a long black skirt that reached to the ground and she moved as if she was on wheels. Esme doesn't think she ever saw her feet. She proffered a cheek for her son to kiss, then surveyed Esme and Kitty through pince-nez. 'Ishbel,' she said to their mother, who was suddenly standing very erect and very alert on the hearthrug, 'something will have to be done about the clothes.

The garden, Kitty, the boat, the minister, their grandmother, that handkerchief.

Esme picks up woollen combinations and asks where they go in the baffling order of things. The shopgirl looks at their grandmother who shakes her head. 'They are from the colonies,' she says.

Maggie O'Farrell

Her grandmother keeps announcing that Esme will never find a husband if she doesn't change her ways. Yesterday, when she said it at breakfast, Esme replied, good, and was sent to finish her meal in the kitchen.

and I took hers, it was as simple as that, but Father said I must never say, that—

Please.' Esme stood. She clasped her hands together to keep them still. 'Miss Murray says I could get a scholarship and after that perhaps university and—' 'There would be no profit in it,' her father said, as he settled himself back into his armchair. My daughters will not work for a living.

Mother and Father had said one night, just before my wedding, that her name would not be mentioned again and that they would thank me if I would act accordingly. And I did, act accordingly, that is, although I thought about her a great deal more than they realised. So I pulled out the letters and—

I am the only tea abstainer in my family. I think they regard this as a baffling perversion. To me, tea tastes like dried lawn clippings, diluted leaf mold, watered down compost mixed with a dash of bovine bodily fluid. I have never been able to stomach it.

The Irish are good in a crisis, Michael Francis thinks, as he eases back the clingfilm on a tray of sandwiches his aunt Bridie has left in the kitchen. They know what to do, what traditions must be observed; they bring food, casseroles, pies, they dole out tea. They know how to discuss bad news: in murmurs, with shakes of the head, their accents wrapping themselves around the syllables of misfortune. A

Our choices are going to determine the future for our children, our children's children, and their children. I take that responsibility very seriously.

Maggie Shayne

God blessed me with two unbelievable parents, and I am just like both of them. I have the smile and charisma of my mother and the big heart of my mom, because she wants to save the world and help the world, so I am just like her.

I got the travel bug when I was quite young. My parents took me and my sisters out of school and we travelled all over Europe. It was an eye-opening experience and, although I love Norway, I also enjoy visiting new countries. I don't get homesick.

RAMNIK. Nobody is asking you to pray all day. ARUNA. Who do you think is protecting this house? RAMNIK. Who do you think is creating all this trouble? (Exits.)