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Families Quotes

Quotes tagged as "families" Showing 1-30 of 278
Arthur Conan Doyle
“A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.”
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Laurie Halse Anderson
“If I had lady-spider legs, I would weave a sky where the stars lined up. Matresses would be tied down tight to their trucks, bodies would never crash through windshields. The moon would rise above the wine-dark sea and give babies only to maidens and musicians who had prayed long and hard. Lost girls wouldn't need compasses or maps. They would find gingerbread paths to lead them out of the forest and home again. They would never sleep in silver boxes with white velvet sheets, not until they were wrinkled-paper grandmas and ready for the trip. ”
Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls

Laurie Halse Anderson
“There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts.

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 till I graduate. It's a shame we just can't admit that we have failed at family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives. Merry Christmas.”
Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

Cecelia Ahern
“All families have their secrets, most people would never know them, but they know there are spaces, gaps where the answers should be, where someone should have sat, where someone used to be. A name that is never uttered, or uttered just once and never again. We all have our secrets.”
Cecelia Ahern, The Book of Tomorrow

Rick Riordan
“If we can’t repair things with the Romans—well, the two sets of demigods have never gotten along. That’s why the gods kept us separate. I don’t know if we could ever belong there.”
Percy didn’t want to argue, but he couldn’t let go of the hope. It felt important—not just for him, but for all the other demigods. It had to be possible to belong in two different worlds at once. After all, that’s what being a demigod was all about—not quite belonging in the mortal world or on Mount Olympus, but trying to make peace with both sides of their nature.”
Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena

Shannon L. Alder
“When someone you love makes compassion, kindness, forgiveness, respect and God an option, you can be sure they have made you an option, as well.”
Shannon L. Alder

Charlotte Brontë
“Your god, sir, is the World. In my eyes, you, too, if not an infidel, are an idolater. I conceive that you ignorantly worship: in all things you appear to me too superstitious. Sir, your god, your great Bel, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon. You, and such as you, have raised him to a throne, put on him a crown, given him a sceptre. Behold how hideously he governs! See him busied at the work he likes best -- making marriages. He binds the young to the old, the strong to the imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius and fetters the dead to the living. In his realm there is hatred -- secret hatred: there is disgust -- unspoken disgust: there is treachery -- family treachery: there is vice -- deep, deadly, domestic vice. In his dominions, children grow unloving between parents who have never loved: infants are nursed on deception from their very birth: they are reared in an atmosphere corrupt with lies ... All that surrounds him hastens to decay: all declines and degenerates under his sceptre. Your god is a masked Death.”
Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

Zadie Smith
“This, after all, was the month in which families began tightening and closing and sealing; from Thanksgiving to the New Year, everybody's world contracted, day by day, into the microcosmic single festive household, each with its own rituals and obsessions, rules and dreams. You didn't feel you could call people. They didn't feel they could phone you. How does one cry for help from these seasonal prisons?”
Zadie Smith, On Beauty

“Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.”
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

Jennifer Haigh
“The story of my family. . .changes with the teller.”
Jennifer Haigh, Faith

Shannon L. Alder
“Don’t waste your time trying to explain yourself to people that are committed to misunderstanding you. Instead, commit your time to explaining who they are to them. When you get a person to see the positive similarities you share, it begins to restore the loss of respect between you.”
Shannon L. Alder

“Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes -- or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist -- not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist.”
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

Craig D. Lounsbrough
“Real relationships are the product of time spent, which is why so many of us have so few of them.”
Craig D. Lounsbrough

Jodi Picoult
“I grew up in a household where we didn't really talk about our feelings, and where the only reason you went to a doctor was because you'd accidentally cut off a limb with a chain saw.”
Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home

Marina Lewycka
“As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.”
Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

Silas House
“Since that night I have come to understand that sometimes the best families of all are those we create ourselves, the people we choose to be with.”
Silas House, Eli the Good

Nicole  Morris
“I just kept living in hope, but I’ve got used to that fact now. The hope is gone. I still dream about her, and I still have nightmares about her. It gets easier to cope with, but it never leaves”.”
Nicole Morris, Vanished: True Stories from Families of Australian Missing Persons

T.F. Hodge
“Scorned and torn, former love mates aim and shoot childish devastating daggers that penetrate beyond target to pierce the heart of their offspring.”
T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

Koren Zailckas
“I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.”
Koren Zailckas, Fury: A Memoir

Alain de Botton
“...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with only the added difficulty that whereas families are at least well-recognised and sanctioned loci for hysteria reminiscent of scenes from Medea, office life typically proceeds behind a mask of shallow cheerfulness, leaving workers grievously unprepared to handle the fury and sadness continually aroused by their colleagues.”
Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

Roland Merullo
“Families are like countries. They have their own language and jokes and secrets and assumptions about the right and wrong ways of doing things, and some of that always shows in the children, the way something of
Germany or Australia always shows in a German or an Australian, no matter where they go. Outsiders like it or they don't, they feel at home there or they don't. It's like the taste of cilantro.


Roland Merullo, A Little Love Story

Hilary McKay
“It had not seemed to matter that Rose was only eight years old.
"More than eight," said Rose. "Nearly nine."
"Darling Rose, even almost nearly nine-year-old's don't fall in love," said forgetful Caddy.
Caddy tried very hard to comfort Rose when Tom had left. It was not an easy job. It was like trying to comfort a small, unhappy tiger.
"Who said anything about falling in love?" growled Rose crossly. "Falling! Falling is by accident! I didn't fall in anything!"
"Oh. Right. Sorry, Posy Rose."
"And I am definitely not in love!”
Hilary McKay, Permanent Rose

Marie Montine
“I know you yearn for him, and for one last time you shall have him. But please, let go of him after this.”
Marie Montine, Mourning Grey: Part Three The Guardians Of The Temple Saga

Marie Montine
“Well, we are still the created, no matter how dark we’ve become. We are no more trespassers than the jaguar that had been trailing us. We all belong, because we all live, as simple as that.”
Marie Montine, Mourning Grey: Part Two

Deborah McKinlay
“Guilt is a feeble emotion. It surrenders too easily”
Deborah McKinlay, The View from Here

M.F. Moonzajer
“We are all bounded with each other on the basis of our beliefs and values; when we question those values, we are certainly left alone, away from our families, friends and the dear one. And that is a cost benefit analysis we all make and we keep satisfying ourselves with the status quo of situations.”
M.F. Moonzajer

Tana French
“I love messy homes, homes where a woman and kids have left their mark on every inch: sticky finger marks down the walls, trinkets and nests of pastel hair-gadgets on the mantelpiece, that smell of flowery things and ironing.”
Tana French, Faithful Place

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