Parents Quotes - Page 2

Once upon a time, there was a generation of parents who were certain that Elvis Presley's unashamed hip-swivellingvwas most certainly the end of society.

Charlie Caruso

Two imbecile parents, whether related or not, have only imbecile offspring.

Charles Benedict Davenport

Of course, some families cannot be saved and their children cannot be returned. Yet, even then, their love for each other must be worth something.

Andrew Bridge

Sonia lives her life fully. If she dies tomorrow, she'll die happy. If she lives the way you want her to live, she'll die miserable. So leave her alone, okay?

Sonia Sotomayor

You can't blame her,' said Amit. 'After a life so full of tragedy anyone would become hard.''What tragedy?' asked Mrs. Chatterji.'Well, when she was four,' said Amit, 'her mother slapped her--it was quite traumatic--and then things went on in that vein. When she was twelve she came in second in an exam...It hardens you.

Vikram Seth

At a certain age our parents offhandedly start telling us things we’ve never heard before, about themselves and their families, their upbringing and history. They’re turning their lives into stories, trying to make sense of them in retrospect and pass them on while there’s still time. You begin, embarrassingly belatedly, to see them as people with lives long preceding your own.

Tim Kreider

Some of our parents were always on our side. Some of our parents chose to banish us rather than see us for who we were. And some of our parents, when they found out we were sick, stopped being dragons and became dragonslayers instead. Sometimes that’s what it takes—the final battle. But it should take much, much less than that.

David Levithan

My father had a lifelong terror, phobia whatever, about hospitals. Makes a lot of sense in hindsight. He was so scared of doctors, he passed that on to me. That's what parents exist for: to pass their phobias on generation to generation.

Jackie Kay

When the Indians saw us whipping our children, they thought at first that we must hate our children, but then they thought, no, no one can hate his child. They decided it must be a religious rite, to make the child hate this world and long for the next. We're a strange vicious people.

Isabel Miller

It's easy for parents to pull the strings that make one dance...after all, they are the ones who tied those strings in the first place

Mercedes Lackey

I think everyone's parents have secrets. You just have to know where to look for them.

Lemony Snicket

There are all these things my mother is good for that my father isn't, and all these things my father is good for that my mother isn't, and if only they could work out their differences, or keep the dim of discord to a minimum, I could have two whole parents.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

Children see beauty in everything.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Leesha knew from experience that when parents don't parent, kids grow up fast.

Cinda Williams Chima

That's such bullshit, Mythology repeated by parents because it lets them force their kids into sports and push them too hard by pretending that in the end it will pay off with the holy scholarship. You know how many kids get a free ride? Hardly any. Like, maybe fourteen.' -Finn (165)

Laurie Halse Anderson

Of course, to be fair, that was a parent's job. The world was so full of sharp bends that if they didn't put a few twists in you, you wouldn't stand a chance of fitting in.

Terry Pratchett

Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you still had your mother or father at your back, you’d be okay.

Jojo Moyes

There was no point in telling my father. He'd never let me quit after only one day. He couldn't help me and he'd make some terrible blunder if he tried. Parents are too innocent for the Boschian landscapes of middle school.

Karen Joy Fowler

From something as simple as what goes in to a good meatloaf to the not so simple - religion, culture, how you should vote, every damn thing you think or believe, your reactions, your behavior - were partially shaped by who and what your parents were.

Sandra Brown

She started dialing his cell, then hung up and tried the landline -- maybe Margaret was a better bet to pick up; their parents' generation still felt morally obligated to answer phones.

Rainbow Rowell

This was the danger of sharing your dreams with your parents. If you told them you wanted to learn to play the guitar, all they heard you say was, “I want to learn to play the guitar,” and then they found some practical, convenient, cheap way, often involving a church basement, for you to do it. But Hector had not come up with any plan of his own. And owning a guitar seemed like an important stepping stone on the way to being a guitar player. So he pawned his soul and said he would take the lessons from the Presbyterian youth minister. What the hell, he thought. Or heck, he thought. What the heck.

Lynne Rae Perkins

Many a man has known that startling instant in which Dan Cupid, that busy young rascal, took things in hand, and told him that his baby girl was not a baby girl now, and was about to fly away from him. It is both a happy and a sad thrill that shoots through a man at such an instant. Happy and joyous at his girl’s arrival at maturity; sad, as it brings to mind that awkward fact that his own youth is now but a myth; and that his scalp is showing vacant spots. His baby girl in a bridal gown! His baby girl a Matron! His baby girl proudly placing a grandchild in his lap!! It’s an impossibility!! But this big world is full of this kind of impossibility, and will stay so as long as Man lasts.

Ernest Vincent Wright

There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow - that, in short, we are all going.

John Green

He had been searching for it his entire life. He had devoted himself to poetry to find it. Now, in the middle of his life, he found it. It was in the face of the love of his life, his daughter. She who had never blushed before, now blushed. And in that blushing, he knew, was the existence of God. That was the day her father learned what God was. God was pure beauty, God was his daughter’s face when she blushed.

Roman Payne

That's the thing about parents. They ask what you think, but they don't really care, or at least they don't care enough to let it affect the outcome.

Peter Monn

If only parents would listen! If only they would let us talk instead of forever and eternally and continuously harping and preaching and nagging and correcting and yacking, yacking, yacking! But they won’t listen! They simply won’t or can’t or don’t want to listen, and we kids keep winding up back in the same old frustrating, lost, lonely corner with no one to relate to either verbally or physically.

Anonymous

Maybe I was crazy to consider it, but I’d always hoped that if I were a good enough girl, if I did everything right, if I said the right things or said nothing at all—I thought my parents would change their minds. I thought they would finally listen when I tried to talk. I thought they would give me a chance. I thought they might finally love me. I always had that stupid hope.

Tahereh Mafi

Every time, he breaks your hearts. And every time, he expects me to pick up the pieces.

Rainbow Rowell

We are born with our father's names. We are not responsible for their failures. We are responsible for what they made us believe in. That is our only obligation. And it is even then a choice which we may sometimes be wise to ignore.

Warren Eyster

I'm sorry. For all of us. Sorry for all the little ways the people who were supposed to love us most could hurt us so deeply, despite their shared heritage and blood, as thought their knowledge of our pasts gave them unlimited access to all the most tender places, the old wounds that could be so easily reopened with no more than a glance, a comment, a passing reminder of all the ways in which we failed to live up to their expectations.

Sarah Ockler

I'm sure my parents must be proud. Or horrified. Or are bitterly arguing about whether they're proud or horrified, and have already hired lawyers to resolve the dispute. -Hayden Upchurch

Neal Shusterman

I think we ought to find something else to do,” said Mandy. “But Alecto my love, you’re the first person to notice my retro diner kitchen. When my parents saw it, they thought I was creating a weird art project.”“I like it. It's got that let’s-drown-ourselves-in-better-days type ambiance,” Alecto declared, his gray eyes narrowed.

Rebecca McNutt

I was an infant when my parents died.Thye both were ornithologists. I've triedSo often to evoke them that todayI have a thousand parents. Sadly theyDissolve in their own virtues and recede,But certain words, chance words I hear or read,Such as "bad heart" always to him refer,And "cancer of the pancreas" to her.

Vladimir Nabokov

Leave Dad alone" I told Aislinn. "His Britishness is sort-circuiting.

Rachel Hawkins

My nerves came back in full force. I'd thrown myself in the deep end, and, feeling like I had no idea how to swim, I had to get back to shore somehow. "I'm sorry," I whispered.

Kelly Batten

Mommy, Daddy, what are they doing?” a little girl asked, watching the bonobos play. Her forehead and palms were pressed against the glass, as if she thought she could break on through to the other side and join them if only she pushed hard enough.“Looks like they need private time!” her father barked back, steering the girl away from the window as her mother brightly proposed, “Let’s go see the hippos!” Not everybody is quite ready for the Bonobo Way, and far be it from me to push it on anyone, especially some stressed-out parents at the zoo. On the other hand, maybe they’re more ready than they realize. Ready or not, its moment has come. The time is now for human beings to step up to the plate and protect our kissing cousins from extinction, as well as learn as much as we can from them about our noblest and kinkiest characteristics, our capacity for peace (even world peace) through pleasure, more satisfying relationships, better communication, hotter sex and deeper love.

Susan Block

Our parents are always an important part of our inner life.

Eraldo Banovac

Why aren't you girls out stealing hubcaps or shoplifting like normal children?

Daniel Clowes

Eventually, many years later, I came to see him the way everyone else saw him—a nice guy who, despite all the damage he did to us, wasn’t a bad man, not inherently bad, anyway. He just wasn’t very bright, and was in over his head on almost every level of life. He was capable of only so much and not a drop more, and because he seemed so harmless and lost, people not only liked him, they protected him. My mother, despite her poverty, left the opposite impression. She left no doubt that she was psychologically tough and mentally sharp, and because of that the Wozniaks disliked her. And that was another difference between my mother and father. My father was a whiner, a complainer, a perpetually unhappy man unable to comprehend the simple fact that sometimes life is unfair. My mother never complained, and yet her poverty-stricken life was miserable. She never carried on about the early death of her raging alcoholic mother, or the father who raped her, or of a diet dictated by the restrictions of food stamps.

John William Tuohy

Going home means going back in time. It's not a trip you care to take alone, and anyway, isn't that the main reason to take a mate? So you have an ally in the civil war against your parents?

Diana Joseph

They were no better than common thieves. They stole our childhood. But even with that, I was heartbroken that I would not know the Wozniaks anymore, the only people who came close to being parents to me. I would be conscious of their absence for the rest of my life. I needed them. You know, if you think about it, we all need each other. But even with all of the evidence against the Wozniaks, I had conflicted emotions about them, then and now. They were the closest I had to a real family and real parents. But now I was bankrupt of any feelings at all towards them at all. I felt then, and feel now, a great sense of loss. I felt as if I were burying them. when I never really had them to lose in the first place. Disillusioned is probably a better word. In fact the very definition of disillusionment is a sense of loss for something you never had. When you are disillusioned and disappointed enough times, you stop hoping. That’s what happens to many foster kids. We become loners, not because we enjoy the solitude, but because we let people into our lives and they disappoint us. So we close up and travel alone. Even in a crowd, we’re alone. Because I survived, I was one of the lucky ones. Why is it so hard to articulate love, yet so easy to express disappointment?

John William Tuohy

In short, Nance, even was you going to the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow - and grow, maybe, to hate us, for keeping you from your fate.

Sarah Waters

Hugo, we are taught to be advanced in every form from academically to socially. I think our parents fucked it up, taking that advancement for granted. They wanted us to grow up with everything and in return of that we became spoiled.

Chelsea Ballinger

The best aunts aren't substitute parents, they're co-conspirators.

Daryl Gregory

Disappointment is part of parenthood, Jasper. The trick is learnin' to love your kids even when they disappoint you.

Barry Lyga

The penguins that spent most of their time fighting were the ones with no chicks...It's like they're supposed to be taking care of their chicks. But because they don't have any, they have nothing to do with all their energy. So they just pick fights.

Maria Semple

What are you doing?" my mom asked. One side of her mouth curled up."I'm trying to move that cup."My parents laughed. I concentrated on the coffee cup, but it didn't budge."I guess I'll have to work on this telekinesis thing. It'll come in handy when Ben is hogging the TV remote and forcing me to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the fifty-millionth time.

Michelle K. Pickett

You're being parental', I said. 'Go find that squid'.

Daryl Gregory

He was big, that Sid. He was a force, a character, and I wondered fleetingly if Sally and I would ever seem as big to our offspring as Sid had seemed to us.

Martha Moody

My parents have always worried that I’d take Amy too personally — they always tell not to read too much into her, And yet I can’t fail to notice that whenever I screw something up, Amy does it right: When I finally quit violin at age twelve, Amy was revealed as a prodigy in the next book. (“Sheesh, violin can be hard work, but handwork is the only way to get better!”) When I blew off the junior championship at age sixteen to do a beach weekend with friends, Amy recommitted to the game. (“Sheesh, I know it’s fun to spend time with friends, but I’d be letting myself and everyone else down if I didn’t show up for the tournament.”) This used to drive me mad, but after I wend off to Harvard (and Amy correct those my parents’ alma mater), I decided it was all too ridiculous to think about. That my parents, two child psychologists, chose this particular public form of passive-aggressiveness toward their child was not just fucked up but also stupid and weird and kind of hilarious.

Gillian Flynn

Her deep romantic nature prevented her from demanding, from asking for that quenching. She wanted it to come freely, like flowers that are sent and not requested.

Sean Ferrer

As I discussed in the previous chapter, attachment researchers have shown that our earliest caregivers don't only feed us, dress us, and comfort us when we are upset; they shape the way our rapidly growing brain perceives reality. Our interactions with our caregivers convey what is safe and what is dangerous: whom we can count on and who will let us down; what we need to do to get our needs met. This information is embodied in the warp and woof of our brain circuitry and forms the template of how we think of ourselves and the world around us. These inner maps are remarkably stable across time.This doesn‘t mean, however, that our maps can‘t be modified by experience. A deep love relationship, particularly during adolescence, when the brain once again goes through a period of exponential change, truly can transform us. So can the birth of a child, as our babies often teach us how to love. Adults who were abused or neglected as children can still learn the beauty of intimacy and mutual trust or have a deep spiritual experience that opens them to a larger universe. In contrast, previously uncontaminated childhood maps can become so distorted by an adult rape or assault that all roads are rerouted into terror or despair. These responses are not reasonable and therefore cannot be changed simply by reframing irrational beliefs.

Bessel A. van der Kolk

We have relinquished and abandoned and left behind and forgotten what we believed we had to relinquish, abandon and leave behind and ultimately forget; we have let ourselves go and we have gone away and we have gone under, but we have relinquished nothing and abandoned nothing and left behind nothing and forgotten nothing; we have in reality extinguished nothing whatsoever, because our parents did not inform us of or enlighten us about the fact that our life-process is in reality nothing but a process of illness. We were up above, in the company of our parents, locked up in our walls and in our rooms and in our books and papers and everything around us and in us was nothing but lethal and we are down below, without our parents, again locked up in these walls and in our rooms and in our books and papers and everything around us and in us is nothing but lethal.

Thomas Bernhard

Carpe Infans! Beware BabiesThere is no other human so seductive that an otherwise rational human will feed, clothe, sit up nights, work trigonometry with, bake cookies for, and generally tolerate for such long extents of time for such paltry returns of goods and services. They are a trap for the unwary ... all of us.

W. Clark Boutwell

It felt like so many years' worth of anxiety and worry were trying to escape all at once—maybe like an emotional volcano, only my mom and dad, they didn't run away to save themselves but sprinted right into my lava. They both jumped up off the couch and wrapped their arms around me even though it meant touching each other. We stayed like that for a long time, and it felt good—almost enough to justify everything that had precipitated it, but not quite.

Matthew Quick

Mrs. Bird smiled at me as I arrived at her side. "They can surprise us, can't they, our parents? The things they got up to before we were born.""Yes," I said. "Almost like they were real people once.

Kate Morton

They were good parents. The worst thing they ever did to us was die.

David Leavitt

Her father had admired her mother without ever truly understanding her. And her mother--her mother had relied on her father without appreciating him. There had been a gulf between them that couldn't be bridged by all the goodwill in the world.

Beatriz Williams

You do what you can," he said, after seconds of silence had stretched to a minute, "to make sure your kids are safe. From the second they're born..." He stared at the lines of Nightshade's face, the ordinariness of it. "You want to protect them. From every skinned knee, from hurt feelings and punk kids who push smaller ones into the dirt, form the worst parts of yourself and the worst parts of this world.

Jennifer Lynn Barnes

The next my parents and Brianna come rollin' up in here, I'm gonna scream, "Hey! Why don't y'all just MOVE IN?!

Rachel Renée Russell

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Parents Quotes - Page 2

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