Quotes About Family

I know you didn't want us. My brothers told me, and I told them they were wrong even though I knew they weren't. I clung to you because I wasn't going to let you just leave what you started. How can you tell me how hard it is to have children? You haven't even tried to be a mother. What right do you have? What makes you a mother?

Sunja believed this. She had loved Hansu, and then she had loved Isak. However, what she felt for her boys, Noa and Mozasu, was more than the love she'd felt for the men; this love for her children felt like life and death. After Noa had gone, she felt half-dead. She could not imagine any mother feeling differently.

There was consolation: The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned.

In their long marriage, the wife gave birth to three sons, but only Hoonie, the eldest and the weakest one, survived. Hoonie was born with a cleft palate and a twisted foot; he was however, endowed with hefty shoulders, a squat build, and a gold complexion.

Hansu did not believe that man was designed to have sex with only one woman; marriage was unnatural to him, but he would never abandon a woman who had borne him children.

Yoseb would not allow Sunja to accept any money from Hansu for Noa's schooling.

I have a granddaughter but no grandsons, and the girl cries too much.

Anguish had deepened the lines along her mother's mouth like a frown setting in for good.

If life allowed revisions, she would let them stay in their bath a little longer, read them one more story before bed, and fix them another plate of shrimp.

It's a filthy world, Solomon. No one is clean. Living makes you dirty. I've met plenty of fancy people from IBJ and the BOJ who are from the best families, and they like to do some sick shit in bed. A lot of them do very bad things in business, but they don't get caught. Most of the ones I've fucked would steal if they had the chance. They're too scared to have any real ambition. Listen, Solomon, nothing will ever change here. Do you see that?

You have the kindest father in the land," her mother would often remark, and Sunja had been proud of his love for them, the way a child from a rich family might have been proud of her father's numerous bags of rice and piles of gold rings.

Yumi felt that her three elder half sisters were as sexually indiscriminate and common as barn animals.

Our lives will be strange at first, but we'll ask God for his blessing—on us and the child." Sunja imagined that his prayer would act like a thick cloak to shield them.

Lately, Sunja wanted to hold babies. How wonderful it would be not to have to worry about a war or having enough food to eat, or finding shelter. Solomon and Phoebe wouldn't have to labor the way she and Kyunghee had, but could just enjoy their children.

Protesting was for young men without families.

What do you do with silence? Casey wondered. It was easier to yell back at her father. It was impossible to beat a person who refused to fight, who's never had a wish to win.

But in the presence of Casey's mother, Ella felt her mother's loss far more profoundly than she'd thought possible.

It did not occur to her to argue with these kinds of well-wishes that she would've given up nearly everything if her mother could have been alive. No one wanted to see how she might be missing something, too-that if Ella were to run away, she had no mother who'd search for her.

Save your family. Feed your belly. Pay attention, and be skeptical of the people in charge.

Aunque había fracasado, ser madre era eterno; era una parte de su vida que no terminaría con su muerte.

Parents weren't supposed to praise their children, she knew this—it would only invite disaster.

A parent must be decisive; a child cannot protect himself.

You must go to school. . .you represent our family, and you must be an excellent person. . .no matter what anyone says or does. . .be a diligent person with a humble heart. Have compassion for everyone. Even your enemies.

too far away. All good marriages, the matchmaker supposed, but her sons were lazy. Not like Hoonie. After