Quotes About Family

of the debacle over Fox Corner when Sylvie died

He loved Viola as only a parent can love a child, but it was hard work.

Her grandfather was dying of old age, Bertie thought. Worn out. Not cancer or a heart attack or an accident or a catastrophe. Old age seemed like a hard way to go.

An only child herself, she was frequently disturbed by the complexity of sibling relationships among her own children.

A boy grows and marries and leaves. He belongs to another woman, but a girl always belongs to her mother.

Her mother was still more of a presence than an absence in her life. Juliet supposed that one day in the future it would be the other way round, but she doubted that would be an improvement.

What a good husband you are, Nancy said afterward, always taking your wife's side rather than your mother's. It's the side of reason I am on, Teddy said. It just so happens that that's where you're always to be found and my mother rarely.

The novelty of hospital visiting was being slowly replaced by the fatigue of hospital visiting.

Yes, Mrs. Todd, a bonny, bouncing baby girl." Sylvie thought

Was I really such a terrible mother?' she asked Bertie. 'Why the past tense?' Bertie said. Sow and reap.

he said that when the baby was born, if it was a boy, I was to call it Edward." "Edward?" Teddy repeated blankly. "After you." And for the first time in the whole of the war Teddy broke.

Oh, man, 'the nursery,' " Dominic said, "what a hell-hole. If I had kids I'd give them the nicest room in the house." "You do have kids," his kid said. "Oh, yeah, well, right, you know what I mean.

Jessica was easier, her character already fixed at the age of eight. Loyal, resourceful, confident, annoying. Clever, too clever sometimes. Too clever for her own good , their father said but their mother said, That's impossible. Especially for a girl.

Murder and suicide aren't genetic ,' Julia said, scoffing sandwiches in the Black Swan in Helmsley after their visit to Rievaulx Terraces. 'Nathan isn't predisposed to tragedy.' Jackson wasn't so sure about that but he kept that thought to himself.

Amelia imagined her parents clasping each other's bodies in a cold embrace and felt sorry for their poor mother who probably thought she had escaped Victor for ever

Neither of them wanted to be close to their father in life, so why would they want to be close to him in death?

Freda had overheard Cissy telling Gladys that Freda was "a show-off brat." She had been wounded by her sister's judgement on her character. I am not a brat, merely unusually confident, she thought

Teddy found himself thinking what a decent human being his father had been, the best of all the family really. The grief caught him unawares.

he wanted a son so he could teach him all the things he knew, as well as how to learn all the things he didn´t know. he couldn´t teach his daughter anything, she knew more than he did already.

Moira and the girls and they soon resumed their furtive

Their parts were fixed—Graham was the villain, Ewan took the role of worthy leading man, Nick was his long-suffering sidekick, and Emily was forever the adolescent ingenue, the moody daughter whose life had been blighted by everyone else (apparently). Gloria herself was offstage, playing the woman in the kitchen.

The rest of the Cokers gravitated rapidly towards the casualty. They were naturally drawn to trouble.

He never imagined, when his daughter was small and infinitely, eternally lovable, that he would ever develop a combative relationship with her.

That was the good thing about Julia, her family background was even more fucked up than his. They were a pair of freakishly bereaved people.