Quotes About Family

Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one's parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child.

Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy.

I have never known a patient to portray his parents more negatively than he actually experienced them in childhood but always more positively--because idealization of his parents was essential for his survival.

You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations.

The front of my head feels like a house, and the thoughts reside within different set places that I can rearrange like furniture, but mostly I don't. I come from a furniture-dodging tribe. We tiptoe around the pieces as they remain in place. I'm thinking that way again. Strange, the small things that make us proud.

Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.

My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.

And my sister, my Lindsey, left me in her memories, where I was meant to be.

Going back to school is like going back in time. Immediately, for better or for worse, you must give up a little piece of your autonomy in order to become part of the group. And every group, of course, has its hierarchies and rules- spoken and unspoken. It is like learning to live once again in a family- which, of course, is the setting where all learning begins.

When I looked back at my days of being a wife and mother, one of the things that most amazed me was that every day I was the one who made the decision as to what three other people would eat. It tired me out just to think about...

There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.

All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me.

It was just too tense, being with Daddy. He wanted everything done in a certain way that only he knew about. I was afraid to move half the time. One I spilled some juice on one of his foreign rugs, and he told me I would never find a husband.

My mom is definitely my rock.

I lived with my mom in a really small apartment. My bedroom was like in the living room. That's why I still love to sleep on couches now.

I've stepped more into my womanhood, I'm a mother now, I'm having a beautiful relationship as a wife and as a friend.

It has been said that a girl grows up to choose a man who either bears a striking resemblance to her father, or one who is nothing like him. Both choices are, at their core, reactions.

Ze weten het. Die daemondingen. Ze weten hoe ik dieren haat... Dat luipaard. Ik heb er jaren nachtmerries van gehad. Vroeger hield ik van dieren. Zij hielden ervan... pap en mam. Ze wijdden hun leven aan de bescherming van dieren tegen stropers. Na hun dood deed elk dier me aan hen denken.' - Nick 'Ik denk dat ik dat net zo voel. Maar je weet dat het niet de schuld was van dat luipaard.' - Claire

Welkom thuis, Alice, liefje. - Myra

Ik heb geen erfgenamen. Ik wil graag dat jij Willowmere erft, Claire. Het is verschrikkelijk duur om te onderhouden, maar met het geld van oom Al kun je het nog een hele tijd volhouden. Dat krijg je natuurlijk ook... Tenslotte, lieve Alice, moeten we het wel in de familie houden. - Myra

But mostly, it's a book about my relationship with my father.

And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.