Family Relationships Quotes - Page 5

Never lose sight of the people who are the foundation of the future you are working to build.

This is the beginning of what we will come to call the Upstairs-Downstairs, Linga-Singha wars.

Perhaps I am a rose-picker and a breeze-sniffer.

Is she a friend of yours?”“No,” Diana said flatly. “She’s my mother.

...it isn’t things and proximity, or even blood that holds us all together. What makes a family is love and loyalty.

She wanted to ask him why they were all strangers who shared the same last name.

It is not a single crime when a child is photographed while sexually assaulted (raped.) It is a life time crime that should have life time punishments attached to it. If the surviving child is, more often than not, going to suffer for life for the crime(s) committed against them, shouldn't the pedophiles suffer just as long? If it often takes decades for survivors to come to terms with exactly how much damage was caused to them, why are there time limits for prosecution?

Oh, how terribly backwards, and yet sadly common, it is to sit scowling at family all the day long and then quickly put on a smile for strangers who drop by.

Pushing them (children) into a career that is “practical”/ “safe”/ prestigious/ well-paying doesn’t count as help. It’s how parents satisfy their own needs.

An orange day, a happy day, a brand-new day in the secret language that only the three of us seemed to understand."Mmmmm," Daddy said, taking a bite of his roll. "Orange wakes you up, but cinnamon makes you remember.

Substitute the word gay for straight and she's the exact same pain in the neck kid sister she was before she told us.

Even after Sonja graduated secondary school at the top of her class and matriculated to the city university biology department, their parents found more to love in Natasha. Sonja's gifts were too complex to be understood, and therefore less desirable.

And yeah, I know most people would think it weird that two guy friends touch as much as we do, but when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too. This is how we work. I hope you get to choose your family and I hope it means as much to you as mine does to me.

You know the saying? Don't go in if you don't have a skin.

Love is a creative act. When you love someone you create a new world for them. My mother did that for me, and with the progress I made and the things I learned, I came back and created a new world and a new understanding for her.

Places are supposed to look smaller when you go back to them, but my road just looked schizoid. A couple of the houses had had nifty little makeovers involving double glazing and amusing faux-antique pastel paint; most of them hadn't. Number 16 looked like it was on its last legs: the roof was in tatters, there was a pile of bricks and a dead wheelbarrow by the front steps, and at some point in the last twenty years someone had set the door on fire. In Number 8, a window on the first floor was lit up, gold and cozy and dangerous as hell.

Spread love. Hug the people you care about and make sure they know that you care and appreciate them. Make it known to your friends and family that you love them.

John was still making comments regarding violent things that he shouldn't, but I hoped he was just being a big mouth. Nobody was going to listen to me anyway.

I sometimes wonder if I am crisscrossing my father's ghostly paths and we are entering same towns or roadside diners or the black ribbons of highways that gleam in the night rain. As if we were images in a time-lapse photograph.

Sometimes family is just not what you were born into.

Until she had had children of her own she had not been able to contemplate the death of either of her parents; when the subject had arisen, in conversation or in her own imagining, she had said only: I just don't know what I'd do.

Zane was pretty sure that worries and bossing were related, like a pair of old aunties.

Rose leaned against the bathroom door. Here it was — her real life, the truth of who she was, barreling down on her like a bus with bad brakes. Here was the truth — she wasn’t the kind of person Jim could fall in love with. She wasn’t what she’d made herself out to be — a cheerful, uncomplicated girl, a normal girl with a happy, orderly life, a girl who wore pretty shoes and had nothing more pressing on her mind that whether ER was a rerun this week. The truth was in the exercise tape she didn’t have time to unwrap, let alone exercise to; the truth was her hairy legs and ugly underwear. Most of all, the truth was her sister, her gorgeous, messed-up, fantastically unhappy and astoundingly irresponsible sister.

There might be bits and pieces of us that I don't like or that drive me up the wall, but at the end of the say, it's who we are. I'm going to make the best of what we have.

I'm young enough to enjoy life, and you're old enough to mind your own business.

You daughter is prudish?” There was a gleam of triumph in Helena Winter’s face. Fee grimaced. Prudish? No, not that she could claim. Far too mild a word for what she felt.

So also in a marriage or in helping a teenager through a difficult identity crisis—there is no quick fix, where you can just move in and make everything right with a positive mental attitude and a bunch of success formulas.

Sisters and brothers just happen, we don't get to choose them, but they become one of our most cherish relationships.

Now and adult, allowed a glimpse of these first cracks in my family's perfect surface, I couldn't help but wonder what else I didn't understand about us all.p 60

I suppose men, even myself, are perpetually boys. The sons of parents who provide the staples of what makes up a life— a home, an example of what it means to be human, however fucked up that may be. We are molded by impressions and an example, single days that stick out, and wounds that split us open and never close. We take on other people’s pain and sometimes make them ours.

If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.

I was such a smart kid, I should have figured out that the only way to really get my parents’ attention was to disappoint them or fail. But by the time I finally realized that, succeeding was already a habit too ingrained to break.

Families share relationships based not only blood, but also the unique affiliation of a terribly long cord when measured in comparison with any other undertaking in a person’s life, from cradle to the grave if you will. These intimate associations create a bond of love, affection, goodwill, and joy that we seek to duplicate when we marry and begin creating our extended families.

Even as children they had been good in fact, but also in order to be seen as good. There was something disturbingly like hypocrisy about it all...

But in a home where grief is fresh and patience has long worn thin, making it through another day is often heroic in itself.

If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

I was so ashamed for a mistake I made unknowingly when I was completely out of control and lost my mind for some reasons. I thought about to end my life next day at some point. I was struggling to cope with my pain, shame and thinking about others who I had hurt unintentionally. The worst moment came when people who I loved most had pulled out their support and threatens me to end relationships. Lesson learns hard way that people who are not with you at worst time of your life have no right to stand beside you when you are at best. Life goes on...........

The thing about families, Arlo thought, was that there was always some question nobody wanted to answer for you, and it was like a stray thread pulling loose in a sweater. You could tug at it all you wanted, but in the end, all you'd have was a pile of twisted yarn.

Boundaries represent awareness, knowing what the limits are and then respecting those limits.

I have actually known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and her children.

Am I alone in this mother-food connection or does being with your mom trigger the sudden and voracious need for large amounts of mac & cheese, rice pudding, and the scraps along the side of a bowl of cookie dough?

There are things you forget naturally-computer passwords, your father's continuing relationship with life-and then there are things you can't forget that you wish you could.

Reluctantly, we had already accepted every challenge at the moment we were born. And as long as we live, we have no right to give up. For we, or at least someone very similar to us, already died once, long ago in a faraway place.

A successful father is not more successful than his children.

When you divorce someone, you divorce their whole family, Madeline had told her once.

Douglas, you have an incredible capacity for missing the point. Will you listen to me, just for once? The debate does not matter. It's not about the issues. Albie might have been naive or ridiculous or pompous or all of those things, but you apologized. You said you were embarassed by him. You took the side of a bunch of arms-dealers! Bloddy bastard arms-dealers against your son - our son - and that was wrong, it was the wrong thing to do, because in a fight you side with the people you love. That's just how it is.

I think we should wean Grandma.

I believe a family can be like that sports team. A successful family wins as a team. But if its members are intent upon winning their own individual battles with one another, the team loses. A winning solution is to work out the differences and, when it’s over, let it be over. Then they can get back in the game as a team.

A theatrical spectacle is inherent whenever family members congregate and reacquaint themselves with powerful universal themes educed from homecomings including hugs, food, drink, conversation, politics, games, music, conflict, terror, mercy, smiles, tears, prayers, misfortune, and self-discovery.

You'd think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people, so many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.

This is how it essentially is for Bunny Junior. He loves his dad. He thinks there is no dad better, cleverer, or more capable, and he stands there beside him with a sense of pride — he's my dad — and he also, of course, stands beside him because he has nowhere else to go.

I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.

My sister and I are so close that we finish each other’s sentences and often wonder who’s memories belong to whom.

She knows Daddy better than I do. I think it's because she's felt since we were children that our Daddy maybe loved me more than he loves her. This isn't true, and she knows that now--people love different people in different ways--but it must have seemed that way to her when we were little. I look as though I just can't make it, she looks like can't nothing stop her. If you look helpless, people react to you in one way and if you look strong, or just come on strong, people react to you in another way, and, since you don't see what they see, this can be very painful. I think that's why Sis was always in front of that damn mirror all the time, when we were kids. She was saying, 'I don't care. I got me.' Of course, this only made her come on stronger than ever, which was the last effect she desired: but that's the way we are and that's how we can sometimes get so fucked up. Anyway, she's past all that. She knows who she is, or, at least, she knows who she damn well isn't.

And you, Mom. I loved you. You've asked if i felt and understood that you loved me. of course I did. And you know this. I loved your love because it kept me safe and happy and wanted, and it existed beyond words and hugs and eyes.

Never close the door of your heart to anyone. They may not be in vibrational alignment today, so you must place physical distance between you and them for your own well-being, but later in life, they may awaken and seek forgiveness, understanding, and peace. If you close the door to your heart, when they come seeking later on, they will find their way blocked and may walk away without knocking, since it took all the courage they had to just approach. Yet, if you leave the door open to your warm heart and they see that you are full of welcoming energy, co-creation will always be the reward, allowing you to make together a more beautiful world for all.

Sophie clutched Grant tighter. 'I don’t know what screwed-up messages from your family are floating around in your head right now, but you’re staying right here.

Never sacrifice your children for the bigger house, fancier car or the 'better life'. The price you pay is hefty and non-refundable in the end.

I was so done with looking at life through the eyes of beer-drinking cheese-heads. I wanted to go on that mission trip and look through the eyes of someone from a different culture and see what they saw. I wanted to meet people who didn’t crush the can of what they just drank on their forehead.-Rebecca Meyer, Crooked Lines

If you should choose to look at those files, you will have to live with the consequences of your choices while, at the same time, being mindful that these choices will not only effect you, but will also infect, sorry, I intended to say effect, our entire family.