Quotes About Family

She says suicide is for cowards. This is an uglynasty Momside. She bought a book about it. Tough love. Sour sugar. Barbed velvet. Silent talk. She leaves the book on the back of the toilet to educate me. She has figured out that I don't say too much. It bugs her.

Gracie's father was an engineer, her mother an accountant. I couldn't picture either one of them yelling or throwing things or having affairs. I could see my dad doing stuff like that. Trish sure did. But Dad carried a war in his skull, and Trish was a drunk. Gracie's parents didn't have anything like that to deal with, but their daughter was falling apart on the bathroom floor.

Mom closes her eyes. Her skin is a flat gray color, like underwear that has been washed so many times it's about to fall apart. I feel bad that I didn't fold more shirts for her.

I can't believe we have to keep playacting until I graduate. It's a shame we can't just admit that we have failed family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives.

It was a prom dress.It was pink.It was originally seventy percent off,but Ma got it down to eighty-five percent off by screaming My water broke! while we were checking out

Home was still hellish, afire with the painful realization that no matter how much I loved my parents my love could not fix them

My father stood and said, I will not live without my mind, then shook the doctor's hand and told me it was time to go home.

Dad: And that tree is sick. See how the branches on the left don't have any buds? I should call someone to take a look at it. Don't want it crashing into your room during a storm. Thanks, Dad. Like I'm not already having a hard time sleeping. Worry #64 : flying tree limbs.(...)

There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if we could rent one for the holidays.

I finish the potatoes. She send me to the TV to watch the parades. Dad stumbles downstairs. How is she? he asked before he goes in the kitchen. It's Thanksgiving, I say. Dad puts on his coat. Doughnuts? he asks. I nod.

Mother and Father apologize. They sing a show tune: 'What are we to do? What are we to do? She's so blue, we're just two. What, oh what, are we supposed to do?' In my headworld they jump on Principal Principal's desk and perform a tap-dance routine. A spotlight flashes on them. A chorus line joins in, and the guidance counselor dances around a spangled cane. I giggle. Zap. Back in their world.

I bet they'd be divorced by now if I hadn't been born. I'm sure I was a huge disappointment. I'm not pretty or smart or athletic. I'm just like them—an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies. I can't believe we have to keep playacting until I graduate. It's a shame we can't just admit that we have failed family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives.

When I was little I had no idea what she'd been through. She used to say Affection is a sign of weakness which totally baffled me because she should be both affectionate and strong. I'd give anything to understand all of the layers of tragedy that forced her shell to become so hard.

Life was a battle, and Mother a tired and bitter captain. The captain I had to obey.

My momma and poppa appeared from the shadows. They flew to me and wrapped their arms around me and cooled my face with their ghost tears.

Oh, wait a minute—when have I seen this before? Got another girlfriend, Daddy? Ready for round two in divorce court? Don't forget to line up a good shrink for Emma; she thinks you're a god.

Mom filed for divorce. In the counselor's office, my parents claimed that we would always be a family because of me, but things would be better now. No more yelling, no more arguments. By tearing our family apart, they were actually making it stronger. By the time I figured out that they were not making any sense, the family counseling was done and Dad was walking down the aisle with Jennifer.

You might not hear back from your mother for a while, though. The post has become most unreliable.

Mom, picking out bits of grain from roll: You're alive because of Dr. Parker. Lia, bleeding where they can't see: Stop exaggerating.

So with the family gone, Mother lived as she wished ... Slowly, snugly, she grew into her background, warm on her grassy bank, poking and peering among the flowery bushes, dishevelled and bright as they. Serenely unkempt were those final years, free from conflict, doubt or dismay, while she reverted gently to a rustic simplicity as a moss-rose reverts to a wild one.

You are basically a flophouse and a pimp away from Pepcid rehab, you know that? I informed Nana.

Oh, boy. Now you see what you've done, Monica Lewinsky, you stupid, stupid tart, I thought. Because of you, I have to explain to my Nana, while she's in a hospital bed with an enlarged gallbladder, what oral sex is. Do you see the damage you've caused? Do you see where your sinful path has led?

We're an Italian family, and food is as important to the holiday as a virgin giving birth to an illegitimate baby in a horse stall.

I do not come from a family of singers. When we get together and warble Happy Birthday to one another over cake and candle, it doesn't sound as much like a song as it does a pack of jackals yapping over a fresh carcass. And in my case, it's nothing that you want to inflict on the innocent, or at least on people who haven't reported us to the city yet. Who is flat, off-key or tone deaf in the Notaro clan is all up in the air--it doesn't matter, and we can't tell, anyway.