Quotes About Family

My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. He rarely displayed his feelings, not even within his family, and was more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin. The Jewish community of Sighet held him in highest esteem; his advice on public and even private matters was frequently sought. There were four of us children. Hilda, the eldest; then Bea; I was the third and the only son; Tzipora was the youngest.

Men to the left! Women to the right! Eight words spokern quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother.

he slapped my father with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours. I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast?

The ghetto was not guarded. One could enter and leave as one pleased. Maria, our former maid, came to see us. Sobbing, she begged us to come with her to her village where she had prepared a safe shelter. My father wouldn't hear of it. He told me and my big sisters,"If you wish, go there. I shall stay here with your mother and the little one …" Naturally, we refused to be separated.

I have a son your age," he began, "but he's not at all like you. He's fair-haired, strong, and healthy. He likes to eat, drink, go to the pictures, laugh, sing, and go out with the girls. He has none of your anxiety, your unhappiness.

My father, an enlightened spirit, believed in man. My grandfather, a fervent Hasid, believed in God. The one taught me to speak, the other to sing. Both loved stories. And when I tell mine, I hear their voices. Whispering from beyond the silenced storm, they are what links the survivor to their memory.

I thought he was talking about my grandmother. I didn't want to see her. I knew she had died - of thirst, maybe - and I was afraid she wouldn't be as I remembered her. I was afraid she wouldn't have the black shawl on her head, nor those burning tears in her eyes, nor that clear, calm expression that could make you forget you were cold.

of the things I want my daughters to know the greatest of these is love.

I will hold your hand and we will walk across this world, and I will sing to you and our babies, and that will be enough for me.

With this in mind, Ava tells herself to be present and celebrate the holiday instead of wishing it was over. After all, one is given only a certain number of Christmases in one's life.

The only person who wants the soldier to live more than the soldier himself is the soldier's mother. Kate

First you love the music that your parents love—and then, later in life, you love the songs your kids love.

It's not a house to us. It's a home. And it's not a home, it's s way of life. Our summertime happens here. This house is part of our past, it's our present, it'll be our future. It's who we are.

What I think is that every family is happy in their own fashion, and every family is unhappy in their own fashion. Every family is both functional and dysfunctional.

That's how it was on Irving Circle and how I was raised: You made the best out of what was within reach, which meant friendships engineered by parents and by the happenstance of housing. I stayed with it because we both had queenly older sisters who rarely condescended to play with us, because Shelley was adopted and I was not, because Shelley had Clue and Life, and I did not

As I finished the bed, thinking it looked surprisingly comfortable, a terrible black feeling came over me and I shuddered, aching at the sudden loneliness. I missed my new family.

Indeed nature is more suggestive of a mother juggling resources to ensure each family member's welfare as she works out differences of interest to make the whole family a cooperative venture, than of a rational engineer designing perfect machinery that obeys unchangeable laws.

We had a little brass plate over the front doorbell that said "Christ is the head of this home, the unseen guest at every meal, the silent listener to every conversation.

People make one happy, not houses.

when you consider they didn't grow up together.

Shrinks will tell you there are only five problems: sex, money, intimacy, trust, children. No, six: add parents, as in in-laws, Alzheimer's, inheritance. And of course they are all related

What is it that makes a family? Certainly no document does, no legal pronouncement or accident of birth. No, real families come from choices we make about who we want to be bound to, and the ties to such families live in our hearts.

There are some things you never say good-bye to

A family is no place for privacy!