family Quotes

“Dragons,” Father went on, “protect their own brood.”

“Houses don’t mean much. It’s the people inside them that are important,”

“What the Zamperinis were experiencing wasn’t denial, and it wasn’t hope. It was belief. . . . Their distress came not from grief but from the certainty that Louie was out there in trouble and they couldn’t reach him.”

“I had found my mountain of gold, after all, and it had not been nuggets but people who had made it up: people like the Company and the Whitlaws. I had not realized until I had left it that I had been on the mountain of gold all that time.”

“I think the reason Uncle had originally been so strict with Father was that he thought of Father as his spiritual son. He hoped that Windrider would be everything that Uncle had once wished Black Dog to be. And like any parent with a child, Uncle was hurt and angry when Windrider did not behave as Uncle wanted. But then, with Dragonwings, Uncle came to accept the fact that he was not always right.”

“I’m not going to build another Dragonwings. When I was up there on it, I found myself wishing you were up there, and your mother with you. And I realized I couldn’t have the two of them together: my family and flying. And just as I saw the hill coming at me, I realized that my family meant more to me than flying. It’s enough for me to know that I can fly.”

“I was, after all, Susanna English, and our family had never needed anyone’s help to gain entrance anywhere.”

“Then they all came together again, and Sonny was part of the family again.”

“Families can go years without hearing a thing, only to find their sons and daughters waiting on the front doorstep, home on leave or sometimes blissfully discharged. But usually you receive a letter made of heavy paper, stamped with the king’s crown seal below a short thank-you for your child’s life. Maybe you even get a few buttons from their torn, obliterated uniforms.”

″‘When I was your age, I left Spain with my mother, father, and sisters. [...] We had to take several ships and the journey lasted months. When we arrived, nothing was as promised. There were many hard times. But life was also exciting. And we had each other.‘”

“Carmen smiled. ‘I am poor, but I am rich. I have my children, I have a garden with roses, and I have my faith and the memories of those who have gone before me. What more is there?‘”

“Esperanza thought of Mama in the hospital and Abuelita in Mexico and how much depended on her being able to work. If she was lucky enough to have a job in the spring, no one was going to get in her way.”

“Yet, it was clear that, for them, I was only Sonny’s brother. Here, I was in Sonny’s world. Or rather: his kingdom. Here, it was not even a question that his veins bore royal blood.”

“After dinner the whole family stretched out on the benches and the floor of the depot and read, with the dictionary in the middle of the room so we kids could look up words we didn’t know...Occasionally, on those nights when we were all reading together, a train would thunder by, shaking the house and rattling the windows. The noise was thunderous, but after we’d been there a while, we didn’t even hear it.”

″‘Here, we have two choices. To be together and miserable or to be together and happy. Mija, we have each other and Abuelita will come. How would she want you to behave? I choose to be happy. So which will you choose?‘”

“In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.”

“She was fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them. The year before they had spent part of the summer with their grandmother Pontellier in Iberville. Feeling secure regarding their happiness and welfare, she did not miss them except with an occasional intense longing. Their absence was a sort of relief, though she did not admit this, even to herself. It seemed to free her of a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her.”

“Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don’t have to say anything”

“I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is leaving you all. I’m not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.”

“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”

″[Winnie] began to feel quite cheerful. She had been kidnapped, but nothing bad had happened, and now it was almost over. Now, remembering the visits of the night before, she smiled—and found that she loved them, this most peculiar family. ”

“He puts the chain with the locket around my neck, then rests his hand over the spot where our baby would be. ‘You’re going to make a great mother, you know,’ he says.”

“Because it’s a good dream. And it’s got cool animals in it and some pretty great people, too. And because I’m your father and I’m the only one you’ve got. And the line of people in this world who really care about you ends here. So stop moping around this place, man. And pick up a shovel and dig a hole. Do something. You just sit here and feel sorry for yourself, man. Help me with your sister. Help me, damn it.”

“Unlike her little brother, Kendra was not a natural rule breaker.”

“In her current situation, her family would die if she failed to act. She had to stand by her previous decision and carry out her plan, regardless of the consequences.”

″‘That is my right. I am your grandfather. And this is my property.’ ‘I am your grandson. You should tell me the truth. You’re not setting a very good example.‘”

“About all he had left at this point was his tremendous dignity . . . Ten children and a lot of hard luck had worn him down, had worn away most of the arrogance he came to this country with. But he still had dignity, and he would not let those deputies push him out the door. He led them.”

“The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.”

“Then she hugged her mother so tightly that her arms began to ache. Her mother hugged Coraline back.”

“She said, ‘You know that I love you.’ And, despite herself, Coraline nodded. It was true: the other mother loved her. But she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves its gold.”

“Coraline shook her head. ‘Why don’t you play with me?’ she asked. ‘Busy,’ he said. ‘Working,’ he added. He still hadn’t turned around to look at her.”

“The boy needs a family around him while he rebuilds.”

″‘You don’t frighten me,’ said Coraline, although they did frighten her, very much. ‘I want my parents back.‘”

″‘We’ll see you soon, though,’ said her other father. ‘When you come back.’ ‘Um,’ said Coraline. ‘And then we’ll all be together as one big, happy family,’ said her other mother. ‘For ever and always.‘”

″‘Yes, dear. Now, I think you could do with some more hair clips, don’t you?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, let’s say half a dozen, to be on the safe side, ‘said her mother. Coraline didn’t say anything.”

“He had his back to her, but she knew, just on seeing him, that his eyes, when he turned around, would be her father’s kind gray eyes, and she crept over and kissed him on the back of his balding head.”

“A lot of kids at school hate their parents. Some of them got hit. And some of them got caught in the middle of wrong lives.”

“The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.”

“Aunt Helen was the only one who hugged me.”

“He saw clearly too his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancour that had divided him from mother and brother and sister. He felt that he was hardly of the one blood with them but stood to them rather in the mystical kinship of fosterage, fosterchild and fosterbrother.”

“She’s my daughter, Rose. My own flesh and blood. I can’t deny her no more than I can deny them boys. . . . You and them boys is my family. You and them and this child is all I got in the world. So I guess what I’m saying is . . . I’d appreciate it if you’d help me take care of her.”

“I took onto Raynell like she was all them babies I had wanted and never had. . . . Like I’d been blessed to relive a part of my life. And if the lord see fit to keep up my strength . . . I’m gonna do her just like your daddy did you . . . I’m gonna give her the best of what’s in me.”

“I know that while you are pleased with yourself you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear regularly from you. You must pardon me if I regard any interruption in your correspondence as a proof that your other duties are equally neglected.”

“You can’t visit the sins of the father upon the child.”

“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t known my daddy. . . . But I’ll say this for him . . . he felt a responsibility toward us. Maybe he ain’t treated us the way I felt he should have . . . but without that responsibility he could have walked off and left us.”

“I was never your father nor of your blood, but I wote well ye are of an higher blood than I wend ye were.”

“It’s my responsibility! You understand that? A man got to take care of his family. You live in my house . . . sleep you behind on my bedclothes . . . fill you belly up with my food . . . cause you my son. You my flesh and blood. Not cause I like you! Cause it’s my duty to take care of you!”

″‘Plenty of people have told me you are not my father,’ said the Wart, ‘but it does not matter a bit.‘”

“I try to stay centered in my faith and my family and the close people around me.”

“Alright . . . Mr. Death. See now . . . I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna take and build me a fence around this yard. See? I’m gonna build me a fence around what belongs to me. And then I want you to stay on the other side. See?”

“I cannot blame them, Catelyn thought. They do not know. And if they did, why should they care? They never knew my sons. Never watched Bran climb with their hearts in their throats, pride and terror so mingled they seemed as one, never heard him laugh, never smiled to see Rickon trying so fiercely to be like his older brothers.”

“See why I’ve got to go back? I don’t belong here. I belong in your world, at Hogwarts.”

“Everyone in his family had always liked the fact that “Stanley Yelnats” was spelled the same frontward and backward. So they kept naming their sons Stanley. Stanley was an only child, as was every other Stanley Yelnats before him. All of them had something else in common. Despite their awful luck, they always remained hopeful. As Stanley’s father liked to say, “I learn from failure.” But perhaps that was part of the curse as well. If Stanley and his father weren’t always hopeful, then it wouldn’t hurt so much every time their hopes were crushed.”

“What scared Stanley the most about dying wasn’t his actual death. He figured he could handle the pain. It wouldn’t be much worse than what he felt now. In fact, maybe at the moment of his death he would be too weak to feel pain. Death would be a relief. What worried him the most was the thought of his parents not knowing what happened to him, not knowing whether he was dead or alive. He hated to imagine what it would be like for his mother and father, day after day, month after month, not knowing, living on false hope. For him, at least, it would be over. For his parents, the pain would never end.”

“I didn’t feel like I belonged with my family, and now I didn’t feel like I belonged with Adam, except unlike my family, who was stuck with me, Adam had chosen me, and this I didn’t understand.”

“I said, ‘My mother said the same thing, that families should be there for each other all the time. She always used to tell me that no matter where I went or what I did that she’d be there for me, even if she wasn’t somewhere that I could see her…‘”

“Mom always said that it was because Teddy saw me first, and because I cut his cord, that somewhere deep down he thought I was is mother.”

“It was like breakers upon a beach; there was new water, but the wave looked just the same. He strolled about and talked with them, and the biggest of them told tales of their prowess, while those who were weaker, or younger and inexperienced, gathered round and listened in admiring silence. The last time he was there, Jurgis had thought of little but his family; but now he was free to listen to these men, and to realize that he was one of them—that their point of view was his point of view, and that the way they kept themselves alive in the world was the way he meant to do it in the future.”

″‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the Shepherd gently. ‘You are in my service, and if you will trust me they will not be able to force you against your will into any family alliance.”

“The woman said…‘I know you don’t understand what it means, but there’s a depression going on all over this country. People can’t find jobs and these are very, very difficult times for everybody. We’ve been lucky enough to find two wonderful families who’ve opened their doors for you.‘”

“There’s something comforting in that. To go down as a family. No one left behind.”

“The process of shaping the child, shapes also the mother herself. Reverence for her sacred burden calls her to all that is pure and good, that she may teach primarily by her own humble, daily example.”

″‘But I guess you’re different, aren’t you, Bud? I guess you sort of carry your family around inside of you, huh?’ ‘I guess I do. Inside my suitcase, too.‘”

“Well, the family always was bright, and brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly. Madness is the most shining way. ”

“How aimless it was, how chaotic, how unreal it was, she thought, looking at her empty coffee cup. Mrs. Ramsay dead; Andrew killed; Prue dead too—repeat it as she might, it roused no feeling in her.”

“The chief component in the family as a system is the marriage. If the marriage is healthy and functional, the family will be healthy and functional. If the marriage is dysfunctional, then the family is dysfunctional.”

“Now, evil, idle sons—sell the land! . . . It is the end of a family—when they begin to sell the land . . . Out of the land we came and into it we must go—and if you will hold your land you can live—no one can rob you of land. . . . If you sell the land, it is the end.”

“Families are as sick as their secrets. The secrets are what they are ashamed of. Family secrets can go back for generations. They can be about suicides, homicides, incest, abortions, addictions, public loss of face, financial disaster, etc. All the secrets get acted out. This is the power of toxic shame.”

“Dysfunctional families are frozen in a trancelike state. The shame-core keeps the system frozen. Everyone is in hiding. The roles cover up each person’s true and authentic self. ”

“When Mom first announced that her Bosnian war refugee great-aunt was coming to live with us, I’d pictured a skeletal woman in a shawl, deep half-moon shadows beneath haunted eyes.”

In a vague way he understood that his father was in trouble and that this was the reason why he himself had not been sent back to Clongowes. For some time he had felt the slight change in his house; and those changes in what he had deemed unchangeable were so many slight shocks to his boyish conception of the world.

“He waited for some moments, listening, before he too took up the air with them. He was listening with pain of spirit to the overtone of weariness behind their frail fresh innocent voices. Even before they set out on life’s journey they seemed weary already of the way.”

“She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she has practiced denying them in herself.”

“She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.”

“As we age, we become our parents; live long enough and we see faces repeat in time.”

“It was a myth that every mother and daughter were best friends, but friendship was far less important than family. Friends came and went; family was always there.”

“Sometimes being brave is being quiet. Being brave is getting off the drug of performance. For me, being brave is trusting that what my God is asking of me,what my family and community is asking from me, is totally different than what our culture says I should do. Sometimes, brave looks boring, and that’s totally, absolutely, okay.”

“– Ah, it’s a scandalous shame for you, Stephen, said his mother, and you’ll live to rue the day you set your foot in that place. I know how it has changed you.”

“Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from.”

“They have not the heart for this battle. So think of your families, think of your homes, and remember it is they you are defending.”

“The situation did have its effect on us boys, of course. Me in particular. I loved my dad. I was the closest to him, and he commenced to use me in his campaign to win back Mom.”

“It seems that horses have no relations; at least, they never know each other after they are sold.”

“For every woman who juggles a child in her arms, there is one who yearns for the cry of a child to comfort. For every family that fills a home, there are those who will never become parents.”

“Blood does not define family. Love does.”

“Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion. From the fame and memory of him that begot me I have learned both shamefastness and manlike behaviour. Of my mother I have learned to be religious, and bountiful; and to forbear, not only to do, but to intend any evil; to content myself with a spare diet, and to fly all such excess as is incidental to great wealth. Of my great-grandfather, both to frequent public schools and auditories, and to get me good and able teachers at home; and that I ought not to think much, if upon such occasions, I were at excessive charges.”

“He talked about how happy he was to be a father, and how much he looked forward to ending his operator career and raising his newborn son, Kai.”

“Only my grandmother knew about my book.”

“It’s important that you know. Our family memory must not be lost.”

“To reverence kith and kin can bring no shame.”

“The basis of education comes from the family!”

“Her mother had already abandoned her. Since that day, I’ve had doubts about the so-called ‘maternal instinct.‘”

“In future feminist movement we need to work harder to show parents the ways ending sexism positively changes family life. Feminist movement is pro-family. ”

“Although divorce was harder than a death, still I felt oddly returned to myself after many years in a close family.”

“In a culture which holds the two-parent patriarchal family in higher esteem than any other arrangement, all children feel emotionally insecure when their family does not measure up to the standard.”

“If you forget to come back for Madame Zeroni, you and your family will be cursed for always and eternity.”

“Ending patriarchal domination of children, by men or women, is the only way to make the family a place where children can be safe, where they can be free, where they can know love.”

“Even if we did survive and Mr. Tanaka adopted us, would my own family cease to exist?”

“I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I respect.”

“It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism.”

“We must take care of our families, wherever we find them.”

A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment.

“From my vantage point, hidden behind the flowers, I’m level with the king’s box and slightly behind it. Mare Barrow, a few yards from the king. What would my family think, or Kilorn for that matter? This man sends us to die, and I’ve willingly become his servant. It makes me sick.”

″... having children-creating a family, so to speak- had taken on entirely new significance for her in the wake of her family’s losses.”

Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred.

“I called all my brothers and uncles and aunts and I said, ‘Listen here! Here’s a wonderful chance for the whole Once-ler Family to get mighty rich.‘”

They were just so all-around awful you could hardly believe they were real: Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and Gladys--six skinny, stringy-haired kids all alike except for being different sizes and having different black-and-blue places where they had clonked each other.

″‘So that’s what it is!’ he suddenly exclaimed aloud. ‘What joy!‘”

“I ain’t kin to nobody in this world...I don’t want to be. I won’t be.”

“Finally one afternoon he came by where she was selling church dinners and asked Ma, ‘Do you go to the movies?’ ‘Yeah’ she said. ‘But I got eight kids and they go to the movies too.’ ‘You got enough for a baseball team,’ he said. He married her and made the baseball team his own, adding four more kids to make it an even twelve. He made no separation between the McBride and the Jordan children, and my siblings and I never thought of or referred to each other as half brothers and half sisters…”

In the dawn of morning there lay the poor little one, with pale cheeks and smiling mouth, leaning against the wall; she had been frozen to death on the last evening of the year . . . No one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, nor into what glory she had entered with her grandmother, on New-year’s day.

“Christmas Day will always be Just as long as we have we.”

“The problem with friends and family is that they know us as we are. They are invested in maintaining us as we are. The last thing we want is to remain as we are.”

“Christmas Day is in our grasp So long as we have hands to grasp.”

″‘I told him you were ready to be part of this family.’ ‘I’m ‘already’ part of this family. I’m like a charter member.‘”

“She told herself that Park’s family must be decent people because they’d raised a person like Park. Never mind that this principle didn’t hold true in her own family.”

“John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother’s shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do.”

“But when Eleanor walked in the house, it was like her siblings didn’t recognize her.”

“The rage rises again, and I don’t even want to control it. But what can I do about it? What can I do to avenge my brother, or even try to save the others?”

“Grandfather looks at us and says the best words of all with which to end a life. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.” We all say it back to him.”

“In my culture, parents were sacred. We at least owed them an answer.”

“Yep, they’re no-neck monsters, all no-neck people are monsters”

“Deep down I was very religious but as a family we were very modern and avant-garde.”

“But it’s like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you’re just clutching air and grit.”

“Sister’s are supposed to fight and make up, because they are sisters and sisters always find their way back to each other.”

“There is a specific kind of fight you can only have with your sister. It’s the kind where you say things you can’t take back. You say them because you can’t help but say them, because you’re so angry it’s coming up in your throat and out your eyes; you’re so angry you can’t see straight. All you see is blood.”

″ Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion. ”

″‘Where are you planning to sleep, the Arctic Circle?’ she asked. I thought, There or maybe the Peruvian Andes, since that’s where Dad once camped. I started to keep a notebook called How to Survive in the Wild.”

“I think that deep down Phoebe thought it was nice too, and she wished her own parents would act more like the Finneys. She couldn’t admit this, though, and in a way, I liked this about Phoebe – that she tried to defend her family.”

″‘See,’ I said, ‘you don’t have any family and neither do I. I’ve got the preacher, of course. But I don’t have a mama. I mean I have one, but I don’t know where she is. She left when I was three years old. I can’t hardly remember her. And I bet you don’t remember your mama much either. So we’re almost like orphans.‘”

“When I am consumed by my problems-stressed out about my life, my family, and my job-I actually convey the belief that I think the circumstances are more important than God’s command to always rejoice.”

Mothers are often fondest of the child which has caused them the greatest pain.

“I have no choice,” he said again. “It’s like a dynasty. If the son doesn’t take the father’s place, the dynasty falls apart. The people expect me to be their rabbi. My family has been their rabbi for six generations now.”

“Bill Hutchinson was standing quiet, staring down at the paper in his hand.‘”

“Soap operas got nothing on my family history.”

“I meant to say I am sorry that Papa broke your figurines, but the words that came out were, ‘I’m sorry your figurines broke, Mama.’”

“Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.”

“One after another our dear ones came running to the opposite bank, testifying in various ways their delight at our return, and hastening up on their side of the river, as we on ours, to the ford at which we had crossed in the morning. We were quickly on the other side, and, full of joy and affection, our happy party was once more united.”

“I joined the army really because of the loss of my family and starvation. I wanted to avenge the deaths of my family. I also had to get some food to survive, and the only way to do that was to be part of the army. It was not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it.”

“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”

“Although I am nine months pregnant, although I have had plenty of time to dream, I have not really considered the specifics of this child. I have thought of this daughter only in terms of what she will be able to do for the daughter I already have…Then again, my dreams for her are no less exalted; I plan for her to save her sister’s life.”

“The scholars who research happiness suggest that more money stops making people happier at a family income of around seventy-five thousand dollars a year. After that, what economists call “diminishing marginal returns”sets in.”

″‘Well, then, I’ll put it off.’ I had no money. I sent my aunt an airmail letter asking her for fifty dollars and said it would be the last money I’d ask; after that she would be getting money back from me, as soon as I got that ship.”

“Deborah and Zakariyya stared at the screen like they’d gone into a trance, mouths open, cheeks sagging. It was the closest they’d come to seeing their mother alive since they were babies.”

“She had a bottomless well of love for me. Her only flaw was that she didn’t make me work for it.”

“If you don’t want to be my sister anymore, that’s one thing. But I don’t think I could stand to lose you as a friend.”

“If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone? ”

“It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order.”

″‘Do you understand?’ My father looked at Andrius, hesitant. ‘You can help me find you,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll know it’s you…just like you know Munch. But you must be very careful.‘”

“Of course, our mothers were good friends. They had gone to school together and then both married their professors and settled down in the same town.”

“You admitted that you’ve always considered Kate’s health, not Anna’s, in making these choices. ... So how can you claim to love them both equally? How can you say that you haven’t been favoring one child in your decisions?”

“I . . . looked in the mirror. . . . I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind. . . . And then I draped the large embroidered red scarf over my face and covered these thoughts up. But underneath the scarf I still knew who I was. I made a promise to myself: I would always remember my parents’ wishes, but I would never forget myself.”

“Beatrice,” he says, looking sternly into my eyes. “We should think of our family.” There is an edge to his voice. “But. But we must also think of ourselves.”

“When I look at the Abnegation lifestyle as an outsider, I think it’s beautiful. When I watch my family move in harmony; when we go to dinner parties and everyone cleans together afterward without having to be asked; when I see Caleb help strangers carry their groceries, I fall in love with this life all over again. It’s only when I try to live it myself that I have trouble. It never feels genuine. But choosing a different faction means I forsake my family. Permanently.”

“It made me wonder, thought, what would have happened if Kate had been healthy. ... Certainly, I would not be part of this family.”

“Joana’s freedom had cost me mine.”

“I want to sue (my parents) for the rights to my own body.”

“It’s a strange thing, becoming an orphan at sixteen. To lose your family long before you’ve had time to create your own to replace it. It’s a very specific sort of loneliness.”

“I was surprised to see a woman. I didn’t think they had woman psychiatrists. This woman was a cross between Myrna Loy and my mother.”

“And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds “joy luck” is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.”

“And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.”

“He wanted to be near and not near them, he saw them close, he saw them far. Suddenly they were awfully small in too large a room in too big a town and much too huge a world.”

“Walter: (Violently) No! ‘Cause ain’t nobody with me! Not even my own mother!”

“Mama: Them houses they put up for colored in them areas way out all seem to cost twice as much as other houses. I did the best I could.”

A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.

“I wonder if they’ll ever find out what really happened. I’ve been so busy staying alive I never thought of what this must be like for my parents.”

“Walter: We have decided to move into our house because my father—my father—he earned it for us brick by brick. We don’t want to make no trouble for nobody or fight no causes, and we will try to be good neighbors. And that’s all we got to say about that. We don’t want your money.”

“Dad winked at Will. Will winked back. They stood now, a boy with corn-colored hair and a man with moon-white hair, a boy with a summer-apple, a man with a winter-apple face. Dad, Dad, thought Will, why, why, he looks…like me in a smashed mirror!”

“Mama: If you a son of mine, tell her! (WALTER picks up his keys and his coat and walks out. She continues, bitterly) You…you are a disgrace to your father’s memory. Somebody get me my hat!”

“Big Walter used to say, he’d get right wet in the eyes sometimes, lean his head back with the water standing in his eyes and say, ‘Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.”

“If there’s one thing a Southerner knows, it’s their family tree.”

“It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.”

“And we needed that money so badly at the time, the whole family was elated. But Kota kept almost all the money for himself.”

“Parents never underestimated the abilities of their own children. Quite the reverse. Sometimes it was well nigh impossible for a teacher to convince the proud father or mother that their beloved offspring was a complete nitwit.”

“Walter: Sometimes it’s like I can see the future stretched out in front of me – just plain as day. The future, Mama. Hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me — a big, looming blank space – full of nothing. Just waiting for me. But it don’t have to be.”

“It was too much to bear, to be loved that much. I’d be surrounded by scores of guards at the palace, but I couldn’t imagine a place safer than my father’s arms.”

“It’s dangerous, son …When a man goes outside his home to look for peace.”

“But he’d been with me the whole time. He’d always been proud of me. Circumstance had pulled us apart, but he was never not my father.”

“So much went through my head. How families are families, no matter the caste. How mothers all have their own worries to bear.”

“Perhaps it was all my years as a big sister, but I just had to keep these girls safe.”

“I practically ran forward and snatched the letter out of her hand. I was so hungry for words from my family.”

Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers.

“My tribe is the grandfather of nations, but I am an unmixed man. The blood of chiefs is in my veins, where it must stay forever.”

“For companies that operate like a family: Sometimes the commitment to being a family gets interpreted in two destructive ways that often remain unspoken. The first one is that ‘we will put up with you no matter how you perform, and you will always have a place here.’ Second, in these companies, it can also be implied that ‘if you give yourself to us, we will take care of you, almost for life.‘”

“Is it really such a big deal for a boy to look like his father? Which is typical butthead thinking, because of course it’s a big deal, if your father happens to be in prison.”

″‘Of course you can, son,’ and it’s like woah! because he never calls me that. Always Max or Maxwell or ‘that boy.‘”

“Who cares what you want? The only thing that matters is what is good for you. Your mother and I only care about what is good for you. You go to school, you become a doctor, you be successful. Then you never have to work in a store like this. Then you have money and respect, and all the things you want will come. You find a nice girl and have children and you have the American Dream. Why would you throw your future away for temporary things that you only want right now?”

“I’ve got to get some seeds. I’ve got to get some seeds, right away. Nothing’s planted. I don’t have a thing in the ground.”

“My father and I were close once. In Jamaica, and even after we moved here, we were inseparable. Most times it felt like me and my dad—the Dreamers—against my mom and my brother—the Non-Dreamers...I listened to his stories about how our life would be after he became famous. I listened long after my mom and brother had stopped listening.”

“He should never have invited Rachel to come here without first giving her a crash course in how to deal with his family. ‘Rich, Entitled, Delusional Chinese Families 101.’ Could he really be part of this family?”

“All you got from him is your looks and your size. You’ve got your mother’s heart, and that’s what counts.”

“I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you’ll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn’t.”

“But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.”

“I never want to be a part of a family like yours. I can’t marry into a clan that thinks it’s too good to have me. And I don’t want my children to ever be connected to such people. I want them to grow up in a loving, nurturing home, surrounded by grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins who consider them equals.”

“My mother saw Riverdale as a haven, a place where I could escape my neighborhood and open my horizons. But for me, it was where I got lost.”

“For the first time, Hazel began to realize how much they had left behind. The holes and tunnels of an old warren become smooth, reassuring and comfortable with use. There are no snags or rough corners. Every length smells of rabbit—of that great, indestructible flood of Rabbitry in which each one is carried along, sure-footed and safe. The heavy work has all been done by countless great-grandmothers and their mates.”

“Why is it so … important for us to look picture-perfect every time we walk out the door? Who exactly are you trying to impress? ... You really care so much about them that you’d rather hit your own son over an accident that you caused in the first place by screaming at him for wearing the wrong cummerbund?”

“Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me.”

″ That most important word: tomorrow. ”

″‘No, sweetie. Just the opposite.’ He rolled his head to face her. ‘I asked you to come so I could watch you live.‘”

“After a few stuttering replies, the spotlight would swivel back to Lydia, and Nath would retreat to his room and his aeronautics magazines.”

″ Lydia’s quietness, her lack of friends. Her recent sinking grades. And, in truth, the strangeness of her family. A family with no friends, a family of misfits.”

“I don’t care if your dad is the Sultan of Brunei. You happened to be born into a privileged family. What you do with that truth is completely up to you. I’m here because I want to be with you. But if I didn’t, all the money in the world wouldn’t have changed my feelings for you.”

″‘I thought he was going to punish us too.’ I try to imagine. ‘Like if there were two Rooms, if he put me in one and you in the other one.‘”

“He doesn’t believe in physical punishment; he believes in staring so cold at me that I turn into a ice-covered ice cube with an icy filling.”

“As hard as it was for me to digest the very concept of a family, the notion of it still tugged on something inside of me, because deep down in the gallows of my truth, I still longed for exactly that. Family. Love.”

“Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.”

“Do they miss their brothers and sisters, too? Bran wondered. Are they calling to Grey Wind and Ghost, to Nymeria and Lady’s Shade? Do they want them to come home and be a pack together?”

“Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood.”

“The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal.”

“I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world!”

“The love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy.”

“Turned on its side, the brick announced a happy bee family, no Ozzie, just Harriet and her ten thousand daughters.”

“When you get . . . to the end, you see that love and family are all there is. Nothing else matters.”

“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?”

“All I had to do was swap my memories for theirs, and I could have my family.”

“Grandmother,” cried the little one, “O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large, glorious Christmas-tree.”

[S]he made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noon-day, and her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

I believe, Messieurs, in loyalty---to one’s friends and one’s family and one’s caste.

Atticus says you can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge ‘em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.

A man who is not a father to his children can never be a real man.

“At the great judgment day, whispered the minister—and, strangely enough, the sense that he was a professional teacher of truth impelled him to answer the child so. Then, and there, before the judgment seat, thy mother, and thou, and I, must stand together. But the daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!”

“His father, a happy-go-lucky and reckless buck, had thought nothing of living close to human beings except that he would be able to forage in their garden in the early morning. He had paid dearly for his rashness.”

“Growing up with only one parent—especially in a place where everyone goes to such great lengths to present a picture-perfect family—really sets you apart.”

“To quietly work away at disposing of your own excess is actually the best way of dealing with a family that doesn’t tidy. As if drawn into your wake, they will begin weeding out unnecessary belongings and tidying without your having to utter a single complaint . . . Cleaning quietly on one’s own generates another interesting change—the ability to tolerate a certain level of untidiness among your family members.”

“By law, I could not have another, but my in-laws were desperate for a boy, a male heir who could carry on the family name. If we had lived in the countryside, they might have just abandoned or drowned the baby girl … However, there was one loophole to the one-child rule: if your baby had a handicap, you were allowed to have another.”

“No matter how advanced we’ve become, there’s still tremendous pressure for girls to get married. Here, it doesn’t matter how successful a woman is professionally. She isn’t considered complete until she is married and has children.”

“If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all.”

“If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.”

“Just now I was looking out the window of the train and thinking. What can be higher than peace in the family and work? The rest isn’t in our power.”

“Mary and Laura clung tight to their rag dolls and did not say anything. The cousins stood around and looked at them. Grandma and all the aunts hugged and kissed them and hugged and kissed them again, saying good-by.”

“Isabel listened as everyone listed more and more things they were looking forward to in the States. Clothes, food, sports, movies, travel, school, opportunity. It all sounded so wonderful, but when it came down to it, all Isabel really wanted was a place where she and her family could be together, and happy.”

“She had never been able to count clave, but she had always assumed it would come to her eventually. That the rhythm of her homeland would one day whisper its secrets to her soul. But would she ever hear it now? Like trading her trumpet, had she swapped the one thing that was really hers—her music—for the chance to keep her family together?”

“Your Aunt Tessa might be a little sad when I’m gone. Do you think you could give her a lot of hugs for me?”

“My parents have a way of ruining things like this.”

“He can be the husband and father Hoyt’s dirty work has never permitted him to be. He can be a whole new man. He can be free.”

″‘So guess what.’ ‘What?... I don’t know...’ ‘I’m pregnant.‘”

″‘As boyfriends go, Paulie Bleeker is totally boss. He is the cheese to my macaroni. And I know people are supposed to fall in love before they reproduce, but—I guess normalcy isn’t really our style.‘”

“I wish that you will have children together, and I wish that once or twice you will tell them about their Uncle Carlo that they never saw.”

“An isolated person is weak. By slowly isolating your victims, you make them more vulnerable to your influence. Take them away from their normal milieu, friends, family, home. Give them the sense of being marginalized, in limbo? ”

“The single mothers who are coming to this country, and the children who follow them, are changing the face of immigration to the United States.”

“I am so sick of you stealing my joy. But that’s changing too. My joy doesn’t come from my friends, it doesn’t come from my job, it doesn’t even come from my husband. My joy is found in Jesus, and just in case you forgot, He has already defeated you. So go back to hell where you belong and leave my family alone!”

“I lost their childhood. Sometimes, you feel bad.”

“She stares awkwardly down at the kitchen counter. Then, quietly, she tells me about four other children I never knew existed.”

“We’ll have to leave the baby behind.”

″‘Dónde está mi mami?’ Enrique cries, over and over. ‘Where is my mom?‘”

“He hugs María Isabel and Aunt Rosa Amalia. Then he steps off.”

“In order for this family to function, we need to communicate.”

“Then I was sitting up; and I was sad because my mother and my father didn’t seem to know I had been so far away.”

“If he would but have named a single relative or friend, I would instantly have written and urged their taking the poor fellow away to some convenient retreat. But he seemed alone, absolutely alone in the universe. A bit of wreck in the mid-Atlantic.”