Quotes About Family

Your biological parents give you their genes, the map of your physical self. But whoever raises you makes you who you are, for better or for worse. Family dynamics are acted out, not built in, though someday scientists might prove otherwise.

My father died when I was young. We all thought it was rather fortunate at first. It simplified all sorts of things. But over time…well. Let's just say I've developed a theory that only the vanished truly leave their mark. And I still don't feel I've sorted it out. Maybe we never do survive our families.

With this much loss, you begin to think it's in the blood, as if there's a dark magnet pulling the body in that direction—pulling, maybe, from the beginning.

You know, they don't hand out manuals for the tough stuff," he said as the band slowed. "I haven't always known what to do as a father, but somehow you've turned out all right." Before

Her absence was still so loud and so heavy, I ached with it, feeling hollow and lost. I didn't know how to forget my mother any more than my father knew how he might comfort me.

I love you, Tatie. You're what's best about me.

And so it was that every few weeks, on a Saturday morning, I went home to Njoro to be a wife. D

Under buttery gravy, there was the ubiquitous tommie steak with buttons of potatoes and pearled onions. My father was paying through the nose for the champagne, so I drank as much as I could, every time it came round.

If you're going to be mad at someone, be mad at your mom. She left you alone. That wasn't right.

Cameron says he's always been this way. But now it's worse. His girlfriend is pregnant and she's going to have the baby. Did her parents tell you that? Maybe I shouldn't even talk about it. I don't know.

We stayed with Jock's aunt and uncle, in their compound below the posh Malabar Hill. Jock's parents and two of his three brothers were there, having come to see if I was up to snuff. I wanted to have a long look at them all, too—the new family I'd won, as if in a lottery. On

stood and looked at them—a band of ruddy, high-boned Scots in a silky brown Indian sea. Jock's mother was the pinkest of all, like a flamingo in bright silk. She

Family life worked most clearly for us when we were alone, at the end of the day, reconnecting and shoring each other up.

reached behind me to adjust the stockings again. "Your mother doesn't like me." "She just doesn't want to lose me. That's how mothers are.

C'mon, Anna. You don't mean that. It's too soon. You should only be thinking about your family right now, and taking care of yourself.

Everyone deserves to belong somewhere.

No matter how resilient children can be, or how wanted, loved, and nurtured they are by their new parents, the original wounds of abandonment and rejection aren't just magically healed. Grit and inner strength don't altogether heal those wounds, either, because the parenting piece is primal. Mothers and fathers are supposed to stay. That's the original human story, in every culture, since the beginning of time.

Jock's drinking didn't help matters. At four o'clock every afternoon when we were in Bombay, we met the rest of the family on the veranda for cocktails. There was a ritual to it,

Jock's drinking didn't help matters. At four o'clock every afternoon when we were in Bombay, we met the rest of the family on the veranda for cocktails. There was a ritual to it, I learned very quickly, every feature played out to the letter, how much ice went in, how much lime, the air filling with a tangy zest that I felt at the back of my throat.

I don't even have a savings account because I don't know my mom's maiden name, and apparently that's the key to the whole thing.

I don't have a bank account because I don't know my mother's maiden name.

I used to watch 'The Waltons' and sob because my family was nothing like that. We had a cruel sense of humor in my family.

I don't need a holiday or a feast to feel grateful for my children, the sun, the moon, the roof over my head, music, and laughter, but I like to take this time to take the path of thanks less traveled.

Margaret quirked her lips, looking much like the imp their mother used to call her. "What flower would ye pick for Katherine Campbell?" Callum snorted. "I wouldna pick flowers." "Ye let her take a bite out of ye." Maggie looked up at him, then cut him off when he opened his mouth to speak. "Ye fancy her. What flower would ye pick for her?" "Tulips," he mumbled, ignoring her knowing smirk.