Quotes by Authors - Page 325

Every family is a family of alligators.
Lorrie Moore
If you look close enough, you can see cracks in everything. And that's okay. Because when you really think about it, it's the cracks and gaps and chinks in things that let the light shine in.
D. Anne Love
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.
Sarah Dessen
A personal journey is part of the generational relay. Live your legacy then pass it on.
Jo Ann V. Glim
Fiction is the poor persons travel agent.
L.Douglas Muncy
No zone have a perfect Family, but my Family is perfect for Me
Beta Metani' Marashi
If I can send you a sign, I will.
Virginia Aird
I'm young enough to enjoy life, and you're old enough to mind your own business.
Virginia Aird
Look to the past to see what the future holds.
Celia Conrad
What a happy woman I am, living in a garden, with books, babies, birds and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find happiness so ea
Rosamunde Pilcher
Family isn't blood," she said bitterly, continuing to back away. "Family is who loves you, who takes care of you.
Bruce Coville
Beauty will never fade away from the eyes of those who love one another.
Auliq-Ice
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.
Allison Rushby
Most parents don't know really their children.
John Green
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.
Sarah Sullivan
She wouldn't climb out of the bed for her sister, but she had climbed into a crater. She wouldn't cross a room, but she had crossed a continent.
Anthony Marra
Letter writing can be seen as a gift because someone has taken his/her time to write and think and express love.
Soraya Diase Coffelt
She knew her place in this family, always had. Knew why she was conceived. And it wasn't for a photo on the mantle.
Kelly Moran
No outbreak of jealousy or malice has ever been welcomed in God’s eyes.” Beatrix continued, “nor shall such an outbreak ever be welcomed in the eyes of your family. If you have sentiments within you that are unpleasant or uncharitable, let them fall stillborn to the ground.
Elizabeth Gilbert
My grandfather used to wear a black hat and coat. You are my children. You are my jewels. We old ones invest our future in you.
Diane Samuels
Then you never really feel comfortable around most people. Especially your family, who probably never seemed to understand you. But as you grow up you find others like yourself, people who support you, embrace your weirdness, and love for who you are - and they become your new family." - Tara
Elizabeth Briggs
Children become frustrated and resentful when they view their parents as not being interested “in how they feel and in their point of view.
Haim G. Ginott
I rolled the ball of muffin and I waited and after my mother said, "That you should really take a multivitamin," my father threw up his hands in disgust, and I was positive I had no family at all, certain it was not my mother but the solar wind that carried me into the universe.
Alison Espach
Mama covered her ears with her hands, but I knew she heard me. Tears streamed from her eyes and dribbled from her chin. Part of me wanted to blot her face with a tissue, real tender-like, but the evil me, the girl tired of keeping her feelings bottled up for fear I'd upset mama, was blissful at causing a commotion. Maybe it was cruel to make mama cry, but at least I had cracked her shell and got a reaction. Any response was better than talking to a zombie
April Young Fritz
They had never been able to sustain fifteen minutes’ conversation with one another without advancing irreconcilable points of view, invigorating in friendships, but in close blood relations producing only uneasy cordiality.
Harper Lee
Mmmhmmm," Mother's delicate hands touched both sides of his cheeks as she spoke, "I do. Your name means 'to give' or 'gift'. Like giving a gift, or it means you are a gift." Then she tapped his nose, "I wonder...what have you been given or what might you have to give?" She looked directly at me, and I knew she mean the question for me as well.
Julia J. Gibbs
Families, by and large, like most groups, resist change. If one member of a family wants to move away, this is regarded as a betrayal, for example. If one member of a family is fat and tries to lose weight, often other members of the family will sabotage the effort. If one member of the family wants to get out of a role he or she has been playing for years, this is usually difficult ot do because the rest of the family tries not to let it happen. If your role is clown, you remain the clown. If your role is responsible oldest child, you probably keep that role within your family for your entire life. If you are the black sheep, you'll find it very diffcult to change colors in the eyes of your family no matter how many good deeds you do.
Edward M. Hallowell
Dad was the glue to the broken pieces of our family.
Joanie Chevalier
45,000 sections of reinforced concrete—three tons each.Nearly 300 watchtowers.Over 250 dog runs.Twenty bunkers.Sixty five miles of anti-vehicle trenches—signal wire, barbed wire, beds of nails.Over 11,000 armed guards.A death strip of sand, well-raked to reveal footprints.200 ordinary people shot dead following attempts to escape the communist regime.96 miles of concrete wall.Not your typical holiday destination.JF Kennedy said the Berlin Wall was a better option than a war. In TDTL, the Anglo-German Bishop family from the pebbledashed English suburb of Oaking argue about this—among other—notions while driving to Cold War Berlin, through all the border checks, with a plan to visit both sides of it.
Joanna Campbell
For a second, I see into the future: she's old and grey, she has senile dementia and can't remember my name. The thought pretty much breaks my heart in two.
Liz Kessler
The hardest thing about talking to teenagers, I had discovered, was that whatever you said inevitably came across like something an elderly aunt would say at a wedding.
Jojo Moyes
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...
Marilynne Robinson
It was hard not to feel sorry for a life that had no purpose of its own... His only purpose, it seemed, was to come into her mother's life in order to send her home. For that, Bay decided, she would be grateful.For the rest, though, she wondered if she would ever be able to forgive him. She hoped she wouldn't remember him long enough to find out.
Sarah Addison Allen
It was about having a box in the attic or basement or attic or garage, something we could return to over and over again, something that said, this is us, this is where we were last year, and this is where we'll stay, and this is where we'll pile on the memories, over and over again, until there are so many memories that it's blinding, the brightness of family, the way love and nurturing is like a color you can't name because it's so new.
Carrie Brownstein
The best transactions in families or between friends occur on the fly. They come as stochastic shocks, or serendipities. People often step out onto our path as we are hurrying to a meeting or intent on finishing a project, and it usually turns out that the meeting or the project was inconsequential compared to the chance to get closer to someone we cared for.
Alan Loy McGinnis
You're my daughter. I don't care about the factions.
Veronica Roth
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.
Gloria Steinem
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.
David Nicholls
No one likes a braggart, and to praise your children is to curse them with misfortune, but we admit it, if only in secret, if only to ourselves: We are proud, we are so proud of them. We've given them all we can, but our greatest gift has been to imprint upon them our own ordinariness. They may begrudge us, may think us unambitious and narrow-minded, but someday they will realize that what makes them unremarkable is what kept them alive.
Anthony Marra
Perhaps I am a rose-picker and a breeze-sniffer.
Sam Wazan
I've had an amazing life. One filled with blessings I could never have imagined.Depressed is the last thing I am. Realistic, yes. Sad, never.
Viola Shipman
Glory had rehearsed angry outbursts in anticipation of his arrival. She began to hope he would come so she could tell him exactly what she thought.
Marilynne Robinson
I tried to teach them [his sons] that about the importance of self-discipline, and that the culture of yes is built on a foundation of no.
Bill Walton
You married into the family. You have to love me. It's a contractual obligation.
Julia Quinn
Emma stared at the ceiling of the hotel room. Her thoughts went over every memorial, each picture, the families and children left behind. At this point it was a nightly routine. Some people counted sheep. Emma counted her father’s victims. One by one.
Anais Torres
So much had never been explained to her. They were that kind of family. Things necessary to know were passed along brother to brother, sister to sister, and this sufficient for most purposes, despite inevitable error and sensational.
Marilynne Robinson
He was supposed to be the first man to tell her that she was beautiful and help her determine who she was before anyone had the opportunity to label her. She was supposed to be his “little girl”.
Anais Torres
Our worth comes from the promises we keep.
Sunanda J. Chatterjee
I prick my hand as I seize the rose from her. “I’ll think about it.” A small spot of blood forms on my palm and I realize I’ve been bleeding on the inside this whole time, all these years. It was only a matter of time before it showed on the outside.
Tracy Krimmer
Husband and wife are like a pair of scissors, joined together for life but always moving in opposite directions. If anyone comes in between, they join together and cut them off.
Hare Krishna Chandrasekaran
Holy crap, Caleb! You're my uncle." Nick"No!" Caleb"It's worse. He's the half-brother of your great-grandfather." Kody"You're not helping." Caleb"No, but I'm entertaining myself at your adorable expense." Kody"Yeah, y'all are missing the important fact. To a Cajun, that makes him my uncle." Nick"Great. I always wanted to be a monkey's uncle. Nice to know I finally succeeded." Caleb
Sherrilyn Kenyon
..All of us are vulnerable to intense, non-productive angry reactions in our current relationships if we do not deal openly and directly with emotional issues from our first family—in particular, losses and cutoffs. If we do not observe and understand how our triangles operate, our anger can keep us stuck in the past, rather than serving as an incentive and guide to form more productive relationship patterns for the future.
Harriet Lerner
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.
Mary Brock Jones
It is so unkind--' 'Perhaps. But sometimes a compulsion comes over one to speak the truth!
Agatha Christie
Family is not just blood. It is the person who stands with you when the odds are impossible, the one who cries with you when your sadness is overwhelming. The individual who sacrifice of their time, talent and care just to let you know you are not alone. These are people that are also your family. They have the blood of the soul running in their veins. The same soul you have
Levon Peter Poe
Dad has shamelessly played the Mom card. Against which there is no defense.
Denis Markell
I felt a surge of love for my aunt. We disagreed about so many things, yet here was family: the people who kept dancing with you, even after the music stopped.
Sibella Giorello
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.
Stephen Covey
But early on I saw this: You are wasting time by suffering twice. I mention this only to show how many things the mind cannot will itself to do, even if it wants to.
Elizabeth Strout
We may view it as our responsibility to control something that is not in fact within our control and yet fail to exercise the power and authority that we do have over our own behavior. Mothers cannot make children think, feel, or be a certain way, but we can be firm, consistent, and clear about what behavior we will and will not tolerate, and what the consequences are for misbehavior. We can also change our part in patterns that keep family members stuck. At the same time we are doomed to failure with any self-help venture if we view the problem as existing within ourselves—or within the child or the child’s father, for that matter. There is never one villain in family life, although it may appear that way on the surface.
Harriet Lerner