Brother I Never Had Quotes & Sayings

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was. — Charles Dickens

I thought about my brother. I hated him. Hated him like a child hates a fallen hero. I hated him for his unlimited potential and his failure to realize it. I hated him because I could see everything that was wonderful about him, how brilliant, how beautiful he was, and how he had turned his back on everything he could have been, cast it off like a designer suit for which he'd paid an obscene sum and never wore. — Lisa Unger

Levin felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is called, from the heart - that is to say, had said only just what they were thinking and feeling - they would simply have looked into each other's faces, and Konstantin could only have said, "You're dying, you're dying!" and Nikolay could only have answered, "I know I'm dying, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" And they could have said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it. — Leo Tolstoy

I'm sorry, I had a meeting"
I stand behind his chair. "Liar," under my breath.
"You weren't at a meeting," take a breath, gain speed, bursting,
"You were with Angie in the office.
I saw you. I saw you. You clamp us down, you think no one knows.
You hurt my brother! My sister!
You hurt my friend! Small trusting prey, huh?
You had to squash some weak person already in pain, thinking she loved you.
You could have chosen to hurt me!
But I'm not worth enough, I never am and you picked poor Angie, you were going to RAPE her, I SAW YOU TRY TO RAPE ANGIE, you fucking MONSTER! — Thalia Chaltas

If I were you? I would go west instead of east. Land in Dorne and raise my banners. The Seven Kingdoms will never be more ripe for conquest than they are right now. A boy king sits the Iron Throne. The north is in chaos, the riverlands a devastation, a rebel holds Storm's End and Dragonstone. When winter comes, the realm will starve. And who remains to deal with all of this, who rules the little king who rules the Seven Kingdoms? Why, my own sweet sister. There is no one else. My brother, Jaime, thirsts for battle, not for power. He's run from every chance he's had to rule. My uncle Kevan would make a passably good regent if someone pressed the duty on him, but he will never reach for it. The gods shaped him to be a follower, not a leader." Well, the gods and my lord father. "Mace Tyrell would grasp the sceptre gladly, but mine own kin are not like to step aside and give it to him. And everyone hates Stannis. Who does that leave? Why, only Cersei. — George R R Martin

Dead Butterfly
By Ellen Bass
For months my daughter carried
a dead monarch in a quart mason jar.
To and from school in her backpack,
to her only friend's house. At the dinner table
it sat like a guest alongside the pot roast.
She took it to bed, propped by her pillow.
Was it the year her brother was born?
Was this her own too-fragile baby
that had lived - so briefly - in its glassed world?
Or the year she refused to go to her father's house?
Was this the holding-her-breath girl she became there?
This plump child in her rolled-down socks
I sometimes wanted to haul back inside me
and carry safe again. What was her fierce
commitment? I never understood.
We just lived with the dead winged thing
as part of her, as part of us,
weightless in its heavy jar. — Ellen Bass

Oh," said Alex quietly, remembering her manners and falling into a curtsy, "apologies, my lord, your new title slipped my mind." Gavin turned back toward Alex, surprised. "No need to stand on ceremony, Alex. I forget that I'm the earl myself most of the time. I cannot seem to get comfortable with the idea that I carry the title now. Besides, I don't see how it would change much. Nick has been an earl your whole life and that doesn't seem to change the way you treat him." He shot her an odd smile and nodded in the direction of Alex's middle brother. Nick, as always, was quick to chime in. "That's right! You lot have never respected my title," he said, puffing out his chest in a false air of pompousness. He added a thickly arrogant tenor to his blustering. "Why should Blackmoor get any respect? I've been the Earl of Farrow since before you were born and it doesn't earn me an ounce of esteem!" Everyone laughed and, with that, the awkwardness of the situation had disappeared. — Sarah MacLean

My brother was a year younger than I am and he was never in the home with me hardly at all, ... My mom had to take him to every school there possibly was to get him some education. He ended up first in Columbus, Ohio, for grade school, then went to a high school for the deaf and Galludet in Washington. — Les Miles

Carter looked awful - I mean even worse than usual. Honestly, the boy had never been in a proper school, and he dressed like a junior professor, with his khaki trousers and a button-down brown shirt and loafers. He's not bad looking, I suppose. He's reasonably tall and fit and his hair isn't hopeless. He's got Dad's eyes, and my mates Liz and Emma have even told me from his picture that he's hot, which I must take with a grain of salt because (a) he's my brother, and (b) my mates are a bit crazed. When it came to clothes, Carter wouldn't have known hot if it bit him on the bum. — Rick Riordan

Where did you get your tat?"
"Aaron's shop. You want to get a tat?" he asked, grinning as if this was hilarious.
"I have one," I said, rolling the ball into the gutter. "It's not finished though."
"How come?"
"My brother interrupted the tattoo and I never had the money to get it done again."
"No, I meant how come you're such a bad bowler? Is it genetic?" he asked. "Like do you come from a long line of people who can't make a ball roll in a straight line?"
"You're hilarious."
"I try, Pixie Dust. — Bijou Hunter

He never liked me. So I never liked him. A long time ago I made a decision that made things a lot simpler for me: I wasn't going to like someone who didn't like me. If someone had a problem with me, I wouldn't argue with him or try to change his mind. If he demonstrated he didn't like me, I came to the conclusion that life was too short, so fuck him. This included quite a few people I ran across in the music business, as well as my own brother and the whole nation of France. I wasn't going to turn into Sally Field ("You like me! You really like me!"), but I wasn't going to waste my time with assholes, either. — Jerry Heller

My wife's name was Mala. The marriage had been arranged by my older brother and his wife. I regarded the proposition with neither objection nor enthusiasm. It was a duty expected of me, as it was expected of every man. She was the daughter of a schoolteacher in Beleghata. I was told that she could cook, knit, embroider, sketch landscapes, and recite poems by Tagore, but these talents could not make up for the fact that she did not possess a fair complexion, and so a string of men had rejected her to her face. She was twenty-seven, an age when her parents had begun to fear that she would never marry, and so they were willing to ship their only child halfway across the world in order to save her from spinsterhood. — Jhumpa Lahiri

It's an experience I'd like to add to the chorus, that these blue-collar, macho men, like my older brother, had the capacity to say: 'I don't care, I love you anyway.' There are young kids thinking: 'I'll never come out because it's too hard in our communities.' But I'm saying maybe your story can be similar to mine. — Colman Domingo

I've had stupid teachers, lazy teachers, boring teachers, teachers who were teachers because their parents were and they hadn't the imagination to think of anything else, teachers who were teachers because of cowardice, because of fear, because of the holidays, because of the pensions, because they were never called to account, never had to actually be any good, ones who could not survive in any other profession, who were not aware they had trod on butterflies. But none of those compared to Mr Maurice Crossan. He was the one who first stamped on my brother's soul. He was dark, as they say here. For those who want more of him visit the dark character of Orlick Dolge in Great Expectations and cross that with a ginger-headed weasel. — Niall Williams

Listen to these wounds of pain put in the form of questions to me by a young woman who had had two abortions: "I wonder about the spirits of those I had aborted, if they were there, if they were hurt? I was under three months each time, but a mother feels life before she feels movement." "I wonder if they are lost and alone?" "I wonder if they will ever have a body?" "I wonder if I will ever have a chance again to bring those spirits back as mine?" Alas, brothers and sisters, "wickedness never was happiness" (Alma 41:10). — Neal A. Maxwell

At the dawn of my days, when still a little child, I had an older brother who died in his youth, before my eyes, being only seventeen years old. And later, making my way through life, I gradually came to see that this brother was, as it were, a pointer and a destination from above in my fate, for if he had not appeared in my life, if he had not been at all, then never, perhaps, as I think, would I have entered monastic orders and set out upon this precious path. That first appearance was still in my childhood, and now, on the decline of my path, a repetition of him, as it were, appeared before my eyes. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Kayla jumped down off of the monkey bars. I thought she was going to apologize. Instead, she pointed at Becky and laughed as hard as she could.
My blood boiled. I glared at her so hard that I thought that lasers would shoot out of my eyes and burn a hole through her. Without thinking, I stood up, walked over to Kayla, and slapped her across the face as hard as I could. I had never hit anyone who wasn't my brother and sister, and I had never hit them as hard as I hit her. My hand stung. I grabbed it and held it between my knees. Kayla squealed, grabbed her face, and ran home. Ashley just looked at me. I reached for Becky, helped her to her feet, and we ran to our house.

- The Castle Park Kids — Laura Smith

My father used to be away for months at a time, and he'd never leave any money for food, so my brother and I had to go out and nick it. — Norman Wisdom

When I was training, I trained with my younger brother Brady. I would wrestle some of my friends, who I had grown up with, which showed me some moves, but it was never a full on match. When I went to competitions, there were other girls, so I always wrestled girls. — Jaimie Alexander

Being born doesn't make a single soul important. But you were important when I met you, that girl who dressed as a boy, who taught herself to shoot true, who dreamed and saved and wanted so badly. That girl was someone who had made herself matter. She was someone I liked. What the hell has happened since you came here that she is so worthless to you? What's happened that only my brother's approval and some power you never needed before can make you important? That's why I didn't want to bring you into this revolution, Amani. Because I didn't want to watch the Blue-Eyed Bandit get unmade by a prince without a kingdom. — Alwyn Hamilton

You were small, but far-famed. We were in Oldtown at your birth, and all the city talked of was the monster that had been born to the King's Hand, and what such an omen might foretell for the realm."
"Famine, plague, and war, no doubt." Tyrion gave a sour smile. "It's always famine, plague, and war. Oh, and winter, and the long night that never ends."
"All that," said Prince Oberyn, "and your father's fall as well. Lord Tywin had made himself greater than King Aerys, I heard one begging brother preach, but only a god is meant to stand above a king. You were his curse, a punishment sent by the gods to teach him that he was no better than any other man."
"I try, but he refuses to learn." Tyrion gave a sigh. "But do go on, I pray you. I love a good tale."
"And well you might, since you were said to have one, a stiff curly tail like a swine's. — George R R Martin

Ursula excelled me without difficulty in swimming, sailing, and fell-walking alike. Marriage had sheered off the first edge of romance from our actual caresses, but there was a sweet affection between us, as between a devoted brother and a devoted sister, though I suppose that is not an approved way of putting it. I always wanted a sister, and never more than at this present moment. — Robert Aickman

I think my mom and dad did a great job with that, because we [with brother] never had any competition in baseball. We always tried to help each other. — Bengie Molina

Her boys were growing up, too. William would start nursery school in January of 1987 at four and a half. The most exciting part for William was the uniform, "which he is thrilled to bits about, especially as Harry is very envious of his big brother!" The next year would find Diana and Charles in Portugal, Spain, and Germany. "It never stops and it's certainly no holiday package tour!" How true. I'd seen that for myself in Washington.
I had been thrilled to catch a television documentary on the royal couple and had said so in my letter. Diana wrote, "An awful lot of money was raised for very worthy causes so that made the intrusion much more worthwhile!" This comment exemplified the conflict Diana faced between her desire for privacy and her desire to do good. — Mary Robertson

Brother John and I had our ears glued to the radio. It was a Sunday afternoon in early December 1941, and our football Giants were getting pounded by the Brooklyn Dodgers, an NFL team that played from 1930 to 1943 in Ebbets Field, a faraway ballpark I'd never seen. So far as I was concerned, Brooklyn was on the other side of the moon. The Polo — Ralph Branca

The other night I went out to have dinner in a London pub and the barmaid had this whole conversation saying, 'You look just like that guy from Twilight'. Every time she came up, she said something like, 'You literally could be his brother'. But she never put two and two together. — Robert Pattinson

I loved school. I loved new shoes and lunch boxes and sharp pencils. I would hold dance contests in tiny finished basements with my friends. I roller-skated in my driveway and walked home from the bus stop on my own. We never locked our door. I had a younger brother whom I loved and also liked. I thought my mother was the most beautiful mother in the world and my father was a superhero who would always protect me. I wish this feeling for every child on earth. — Amy Poehler

All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me. — Alice Walker

Although I never married, my brother fortunately did, and I have had the pleasure of watching his three sons and daughter grow up. Several of them now have children of their own. We have been a close-knit family, although often separated by distance, and have shared each other's happiness, sorrows, and aspirations. — Gertrude B. Elion

I was scared for her, which was kind of a new feeling for me because I never really pay that much attention to anyone. Aves was just so destroyed after New Year's Eve that I couldn't help myself. I was either stepping up as the role of overprotective big brother, or I'd developed an impossible crush and was pissed off that someone dared hurt my woman. I had no idea which it was.
Turns out I was every bit as tangled up in our warped relationship as Avery and Aiden. Thanks a lot, moms. Prenatal yoga classes should be illegal. — Kelly Oram

Your brother?" St. Clair points above my bed to the only picture I've hung up. Seany is grinning at the camera and pointing at one of my mother's research turtles,which is lifting its neck and threatening to take away his finger. Mom is doing a study on the lifetime reproductive habits of snapping turtles and visits her brood in the Chattahoochie River several times a month. My brother loves to go with her, while I prefer the safety of our home. Snapping turtles are mean.
"Yep.That's Sean."
"That's a little Irish for a family with tartan bedspreads."
I smile. "It's kind of a sore spot. My mom loved the name,but Granddad-my father's father-practically died when he heard it.He was rooting for Malcolm or Ewan or Dougal instead."
St. Clair laughs. "How old is he?"
"Seven.He's in the second grade."
"That's a big age difference."
"Well,he was either an accident or a last-ditch effort to save a failing marriage.I've never had the nerve to ask which. — Stephanie Perkins

I tried to take solace in Holiday, our dog. I missed him in a way I hadn't yet let myself miss my mother and father, my sister and brother. That way of missing would mean that I had accepted that I would never be with them again; it might sound silly but I didn't believe it, would not believe it. — Alice Sebold

Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry, you can't have a baby brother, because that would mean that Daddy had sex, and that's never going to happen again. — Christopher Moore

I have walked all my life through this tarnished world. After she walked out of Toronto with her brother, after that first unremembered year, her brother had been plagued by nightmares. "The road," he'd always said, when she shook him awake and asked what he'd been dreaming of. He'd said, "I hope you never remember it. — Emily St. John Mandel

If!" protested Mercy. "I am marrying you, Kit Turner, and there's an end to it!"
Tobias nudged James. "I told you she'd produce a landslide when she got rolling."
Kit, however, was not yet fully aware of the character of the girl whom he had just pledged himself. He put his finger to her lips. "Hush, now, this is between your father and me, Mercy. Let me deal with it."
"Oh, dear, oh, dear," muttered James, shaking his head. "Our brother has a lot to learn about the fairer sex. You never, ever do that."
Kit was suddenly sitting in a chair, a sharp elbow having found a tender spot. Mercy stood before her father, looking defiant, if somewhat bedraggled after her night in prison. — Eve Edwards

If you had to pick between living on the East Coast or the West Coast, which would you choose? I never told her what I wanted to give as my answer, that I would choose whichever coast my brother happened to be hiding on or locked in a basement near or buried under. I never told her that even if I did know what I wanted to be, I couldn't bear the thought of leaving Lily as long as I knew my brother might show up one day or that whoever was responsible for his leaving was still out there somewhere waiting to do it again and again and again until a thousand Cullen Witters were seeing zombies of their dead brothers standing by their beds at night. I would need to be there to protect him. — John Corey Whaley

I was being sincere. Hold on to it as long as you can, Lark. Life knocks the stuffing out of you
eventually. Look at me. Look at Cade. As long as things are simple, keep them that way. As long as
unrequited liking is the least of your worries ... it's not so bad."
"It feels bad."
"I know. Take comfort in the fact that that actually makes you pretty normal."
"Not comforted."
He laughed. "That's normal too."
"Shut up."
"Love you too." He didn't say it often enough. But it had never been easy for him to say.
That earned him a smile. "I do. Love you, you know. Thanks for trying. And thanks for ... being
willing to kill someone for me."
"It's what brothers are for. 'Night — Maisey Yates

I miss talking to you, Fallen."
"That's too bad. I don't ever miss anything about you."
"You're fun." His eyes sparkled like sunlit gems. "You're never afraid to go tit for tat with me."
"I don't want anything to do with your tits or tats."
He laughed again, his eyes darkening back to brown.


"Did we really just get beat up by that little Junior Guardian?"
"If anyone asks we'll say that there were fifty of them."
I touched my cheek and hissed. "Goddamn ninja punk."
"I feel terrible and I don't mean my wounded ego. I feel really bad." He groaned and rolled to his side, not moving from the floor. "I can't believe we just got our asses handed to us by a goddamn Jonas-brother wannabe."
"He had the hilt piece. Did you see it?"
"No, I was too busy crying like a girl. — Cori Moore

Riley?"
"Go away." He'd heard Brenna enter, had decided to ignore her.
But Brenna had never been easily dissuaded. "Drew said you're not sleeping well- that you were up most of last night."
He went through a vicious series of moves and ended a foot from her, breath calm, eyes furious. "Drew has a big fucking mouth."
"Yeah, tell me something I don't know." She grinned, but there was worry in those magnificent eyes she'd turned from a scar to a badge of courage. "Riley, is this ... I ... "
Scowling, he closed the distance between them to cup her cheek. "It's not about you." Her hurt haunted him, but he wasn't going to put that weight on her back. That was his cross to bear. "I'm not sleeping well because I want sex."
Her mouth dropped open. Then she went bright red. "Too. Much. Information! — Nalini Singh

Bass! How low can you go?
Death row ... what a brother know.
Once again, back is the incredible,
The rhyme animal, the uncannable "D!"
Public Enemy Number One.
Five-O said, "Freeze!" and I got numb.
Can I tell 'em that I really never had a gun?
But it's the wax that the Terminator X spun. — Chuck D

I have never seen a
man break the way he did. And he broke. Set half the damn Covenant on fire. If his brother hadn't
showed up when he had, I'm positive that he would've stayed in the burning building. Is that what you
wanted to know? Did it make you feel better, Alexandria? — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I WAKE TO a headache. I try to go back to sleep - at least when I'm asleep, I'm calm - but the image of Caleb standing in the doorway runs through my mind over and over again, accompanied by the sound of squawking crows.
Why did I never wonder how Eric and Jeanine knew that I had aptitude for three factions?
Why did it never occur to me that only three people in the world knew that particular fact: Tori, Caleb, and Tobias?
My head pounds. I can't make sense of it. I don't know why Caleb would betray me. I wonder when it happened - after the attack simulation? After the escape from Amity? Or was it earlier than that - was it back when my father was still alive? Caleb told us he left Erudite when he found out what they were planning - was he lying?
He must have been. I press the heel of my hand to my forehead. My brother chose faction over blood. There has to be a reason. She must have threatened him. Or coerced him in some way. — Veronica Roth

I remembered his older brother, who had died in Sicily, in battle for the free world- he had barely had time to see Sicily before he died and had assuredly never seen the free world. — James Baldwin

That he had no scruples; for, said he, when I fail in my duty, I readily acknowledge it, saying, I am used to do so: I shall never do otherwise, if I am left to myself. I fail not, then I give GOD thanks, acknowledging the strength comes from Him. — Brother Lawrence

I thought, What a miserable life he's had, having to hide his religion, his name, just to get a job
as a driver - and he is a good driver, no question of it, a far better one than I will ever be.Part of
me wanted to get up and apologize to him right there and say, You go and be a driver in Delhi.
You never did anything to hurt me. Forgive me, brother.
I turned to the other side, farted, and went back to sleep. — Aravind Adiga

Will knelt beside me. I wished I could have taken a holo of him at that moment and played it for him the next time he kicked me out of his room. He never would believe he was the same brother who had once tried to knock me out with a pillow. — Cameron Stracher

Kell had told his brother about the deals he struck in Grey London, and in White, and even on occasion in Red, about the various things he'd smuggled, and Rhy had stared at him, and listened, and when he spoke, it wasn't to lecture Kell on all the ways it was wrong, or illegal. It was to ask why.
"I don't know," said Kell, and it had been the truth.
Rhy had sat up, eyes bleary from drink. "Have we not provided?" he'd asked, visibly upset. "Is there anything you want for?"
"No," Kell had answered, and that had been a truth and a lie at the same time.
"Are you not loved?" whispered Rhy. "Are you not welcomed as family?"
"But I'm not family, Rhy," Kell had said. "I'm not truly a Maresh, for all that the king and queen have offered me that name. I feel more like a possession than a prince."
At that, Rhy had punched him in the face.
For a week after, Kell had two black eyes instead of one, and he'd never spoken like that again, but the damage was done. — Victoria Schwab

There is only one lifemate. She obviously belongs with Jacques."
"We do not know that. If he were not your brother ... " Byron began.
A low snarl stopped him. "I see no reason for you to question my judgment in this matter, Byron. I have had more than one brother, and I have never let fraternity stand in the way of what is just or right."
"It was Gregori who hunted your other brother," Byron pointed out.
Mikhail turned his head slowly, black eyes catching the whip of lightning cracking across the sky. "At my order. — Christine Feehan

Nadia...first, I'm flattered you like me. You're a wonderful girl, and I'm lucky that I met you. You're one of my best friends, my only friends. And since that night with Ivy, you've been amazing. You and your brother have truly been there when I needed you to be."
I sigh. "Maybe if things had stayed normal - if I never got attacked, if I never met Ivy - I may have been able to return your feelings. But now...right now, I need a friend more than a girlfriend to help me get through this."
Nadia didn't look very happy, but she nodded; she understood. "You really liked her, didn't you?"
There was no doubt about my answer.
"Yeah. I did. I still do. And I will for the rest of my life. — Colleen Boyd

I had never heard that before; and so poor Rob Roy who was killed at that hunt was my brother! I did not wonder that my mother was so troubled. It seems that horses have no relations; at least they never know each other after they are sold. — Anna Sewell

And so [my brother] Gilbert and I, brought up without a formal religion, remained throughout our lifetimes just what Father was, freethinkers. And, likewise, doubters and dissenters and perhaps Utopians. Father's rule had been 'Question everything, take nothing for granted,' and I never outlived it, and I would suggest it be made the motto of a world journalists' association. — George Seldes

Walt had a way of communicating that was just magical," composer Richard Sherman told me. "Simple, but magical. He would give you a challenge and say, 'I know you can do this.' He made you believe anything was possible. He made you proud to be on his team. And it really was a team effort - Walt would roll up his sleeves and go to work alongside the rest of us. "He saw potential in people who had never really done anything great. My brother Robert and I really had no track record in the music industry, but Walt heard a few of our songs and he gave us an opportunity and inspired us to keep topping ourselves. Without Walt to inspire us, I don't know where we'd be today. "Walt always wanted you to find something wonderful in yourself, to believe in it and consider it God's gift to you. God gives you the gift, and the rest is up to you. Walt taught me that what you do with that gift is your gift back to God. — Pat Williams

That is a very different sort of housekeeper you have there," Val said, when the library door had closed behind her. "I know." Westhaven made a sandwich and checked again to make sure his brother hadn't pilfered the marzipan. "She's a little cheeky, to be honest, but does her job with particular enthusiasm. She puts me in mind of Her Grace." "How so?" Val asked, making a sandwich, as well. "Has an indomitable quality about her," Westhaven said between bites. "She bashed me with a poker when she thought I was a caller molesting a housemaid. Put out my lights, thank you very much." "Heavens." Val paused in his chewing. "You didn't summon the watch?" "The appearances were deceiving, and she doesn't know I'd never trifle with a housemaid." "And if you were of a mind to before," Val said, eyeing the marzipan, "you'd sure as hell think twice about it now. — Grace Burrowes

After my parents divorced, my father remarried and my brothers were born when I was twelve and sixteen. I was thunderstruck at these kids. The "baby-ness" of them. Their toes. I had never been around babies before. — Leigh Newman

O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!' (Alice thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before, but she remembered having seen in her brother's Latin Grammar, 'A mouse - of a mouse - to a mouse - a mouse - O mouse!') — Lewis Carroll

I think of Jeremy telling me I had to be ruthless to be a writer. And I think how I did not go visit my brother and sister and my parents because I was always working on a story and there was never enough time. (But I didn't want to go either.) There never was enough time, and then later I knew if I stayed in my marriage I would not write another book, not the kind I wanted to, and there is that as well. But really, the ruthlessness, I think, comes in grabbing onto myself, in saying: This is me, and I will not go where I can't bear to go - to Amgash, Illinois - and I will not stay in a marriage when I don't want to, and I will grab myself and hurl onward through life, blind as a bat, but on I go! This is the ruthlessness, I think. — Elizabeth Strout

I never really had to deal with a death in the family, let alone my brother. — Torrey Smith

I realized early that despite her gregarious and inherently buoyant disposition, a certain sadness resided in my mother. Even I, her only child, whom she loved more than anything in the world, could do little to soothe the sorrow that has taken root with the separation from her parents, her two sisters and her brother. The contrast in the life my mother experienced before and after leaving Tibet was so extreme, it must have been impossible for her to make sense of her life and to escape the inexhaustible longing for the past. Caring for me on her own inside crowded rooms of tenement buildings in towns and cities, she must have felt she had dreamt her past or that she was dreaming her present existence. The places and residences we lived in were never quite home to her and led her to cling, more tenaciously, to the past. My mother had guarded her past sorrows from me because she knew me well enough to sense I would carry her grief as my own. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

I was very much in my own world, never the popular kid. But I had a great family, a great brother and mother. — Jared Leto

I know very well you can't help me," he said. "But I tell you, because unsuccessful and superfluous people like me find their salvation in talking. I have to generalise about everything I do. I'm bound to look for an explanation and justification of my absurd existence in somebody else's theories, in literary types - in the idea that we, upper-class Russians, are degenerating, for instance, and so on. Last night, for example, I comforted myself by thinking all the time: 'Ah, how true Tolstoy is, how mercilessly true!' And that did me good. Yes, really, brother, he is a great writer, say what you like!" Samoylenko, who had never read Tolstoy and was intending to do so every day of his life, was a little embarrassed, and said: "Yes, all other authors write from imagination, but he writes straight from nature. — Anton Chekhov

But they were all dead now, even Arya, everyone but her half-brother, Jon. Some nights she heard talk of him, in the taverns and brothels of the Ragman's Harbor. The Black Bastard of the wall, one man had called him. Even Jon would never know Blind Beth, i bet. That made her sad. — George R R Martin

They always blamed my reading, you know, for my having fewer friends than my brother and for my weak eyes, never thinking that because I had weak eyes and because I was shy, having a book at the ready rescued me. — Matthew Pearl

Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They took her to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo. My mother remained in the same hospital at Kalamazoo for about 26 years.
My last visit, when I knew I would never come to see her again-there-was in 1952. I was twenty-seven. My brother Philbert had told me that on his last visit, she had recognized him somewhat. "In spots" he said.
But she didn't recognize me at all.
She stared at me. She didn't know who I was.
Her mind, when I tried to talk, to reach her, was somewhere else. I asked, "Mama, do you know what day it is?"
She said, staring, "All the people have gone."
I can't describe how I felt. The woman who had brought me into the world, and nursed me, and advised me, and chastised me, and loved me, didn't know me.
It was as if I was trying to walk up the side of a hill of feathers."
-Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X — Malcolm X

Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words brother and sisters, and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning. — Frederick Douglass

Fonny and I just sat there ... while the voices of the congregation rose and rose around us, without mercy ... Teddy had the tambourine, and gave the cue to the piano player-I never got to know him: a long dark, evil-looking brother, with hands made for strangling; and with these hands he attacked the keyboard like he was beating the brains out of someone he remembered. No doubt the congregation had their memories, too, and they went to pieces. The church began to rock. — James A. Baldwin

During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes I had never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his own early life. This reticence upon his part had increased the somewhat inhuman effect which he produced upon me, until sometimes I found myself regarding him as an isolated phenomenon, a brain without a heart, as deficient in human sympathy as he was pre-eminent in intelligence. His aversion to women and his disinclination to form new friendships were both typical of his unemotional character, but not more so than his complete suppression of every reference to his own people. I had come to believe that he was an orphan with no relatives living, but one day, to my very great surprise, he began to talk to me about his brother. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Joffrey is in my prayers as well," said Margaery. "I loved him dearly, though I never had the chance to know him." Liar, the queen thought. If you had loved him even for an instant, you would not have been in such unseemly haste to wed his brother. His crown was all you ever wanted. For — George R R Martin

Sometimes I think I spent forever waiting for you,' he says. 'My whole life, I've never had someone like you. Someone who doesn't have to be there, but is anyway. Someone who wants to just ... be with me because they want me. For me. Not because I'm your brother or your kid or anything, but because you choose me. — Amanda Grace

To her lips, pressing in and his face got close. "I'm guessin' you get what this is. We played with fire, we got burned, now we gotta contain the blaze, but sayin' that, I got no intention of puttin' it out and, babe, I'm gettin', since you left me a trail of breadcrumbs to this room, you don't either." She tried to turn her head to get away from his thumb to say something but Hop kept going. "We get it, we don't gotta talk about it. We know what we got revolves around bein' naked in a bed, so you shouldn't get what I'm gonna give you right now. But I'm gonna give it to you. Never had class. Never had beauty. I'll repeat, never ... had ... class. I'm not gonna fuck over Cherry, who I care about, or Tack, who's my brother, and I know you don't wanna do that either, so this is what we got for as long as it's good. But it's a clean, pure beauty the like I've never had, I'm gonna respect it like I feel like I gotta and you're gonna let me." He paused, bent his face — Kristen Ashley

Daniel: What do you think of the idea?
Sternlight: I'll tell you man, I think it's a fantastic idea. Fuck me if I'm consistent. I told your sister if she had all that bread to pass on for a bail fund or a free school or any good shit like that, I would retract everything I said about your parents. Not only that, I would actually change my opinion. I would think differently. OK?
Daniel: OK.
Sternlight: discards the poster.
Sternlight: That's the one question you shouldn't have asked.
Daniel: Maybe so.
Sternlight: And I've been pretty easy on you, too. Susan never mentioned you. Except once. She said she had a brother who was politically undeveloped. She made it sound like undescended tesicles.
Baby: Come on, Artie.
Sternlight: gets up, turns on the television squats in front of it. — E.L. Doctorow

As a kid, I was growing up in an era of celebration of the Civil War centennial, with a lot of 'Lost Cause' emphasis on the Confederacy. I used to play Civil War soldiers with my brothers as a child, and my older brother always insisted that he got to be Lee, and I got be Grant. I never knew that Grant won until quite some time had passed. — Drew Gilpin Faust

You will NEVER be just a guy, Rome. You're the best brother a guy could have. You're a fucking hero. No one, and I mean no one, has ever had my back the way you have. You are an incredible person, be it in the army fighting a war or sitting on the goddamn couch watching the game. Don't forget it. — Jay Crownover

Narziss, I am guilty of having passed rash judgement on you. I had thought you proud, and perhaps I did you an injustice. You are much alone, brother; you have many to admire you, but no friends. I wished to find the pretext to chide you a little. But I find none. I wanted to see you as disobedient as young men of your age so easily are. But you never disobey. Sometimes Narziss, you make me uneasy. — Hermann Hesse

We're not unique in our family. We're more ambitious but we're not special. I'm not funnier than anyone else in my family; it's just that we wanted more than Raleigh, North Carolina, had to offer. If my brother wanted more than Raleigh had to offer, you would know his name. My sister Lisa has a really unique and different voice, but she doesn't want that. She's a fine writer, but never said, "I want a book. I want that kind of attention." — David Sedaris

How many people have more than one bible in your house? If you have more than one Bible in your home, I challenge you to have a bit more compassion and think about those who have never had access to the Word of God. — Brother Yun

I had no idea that that was around in the family anywhere. Maybe it never was. But - so they broke the way for me, if you know what I mean. I have no idea where I got the idea from to do what I do. But I think they - Ian and Alistair, my brothers kind of opened a lot of doors for me onto the world - you know, made it seem to be a very, very interesting place. — Maggie Smith

When I asked my father why Mademoiselle Finkelstein was such a cruel woman, he said it was because she was unmarried, which caused women to be come bitter, harsh, and unforgiving after they reached the age of thirty. of course, he explained, they made wonderful teachers, because they had the unfettered time to dedicate to their profession and they knew how to instill discipline. on the other hand, unmarried men, like his younger brother, Uncle Jihad, were simply eccentrics and did not suffer accordingly. The difference, he elaborated, was that men chose to be unmarried, whereas women had to live with never having been chosen. — Rabih Alameddine

And that love letter you wrote," Rowan added helpfully. "Signing it with another chap's name." Emma Smallwood's eyes widened, and she turned to look at him, brows high. Henry felt his neck heat. His cravat seemed suddenly far too tight. "That's right," Phillip nodded as the memory returned to him. "Pugsworth, was it not?" Julian grinned at Miss Smallwood, clearly enjoying himself. "Did you really think this Pugsworth fellow in love with you?" Heaven help him, Henry hoped she wouldn't burst into disillusioned tears. Not all these years later. And not over Milton Pugsworth. But Miss Smallwood remained her imperturbable self. "Goodness no," she said. "For all his faults, Mr. Pugsworth spelled exceptionally well and had the neatest hand I ever saw. Your brother, on the other hand, never did learn to spell. And I recognized his sloppy scratchings the moment I saw them." Phillip gave her a long look of amused approval. "Bravo, Emma. — Julie Klassen

My older brother's been my best friend since I can remember. I talk to him every day of my life, and anytime he's in town we're together. But I'm also very close with my parents. We all get along very, very well. We've never had fights or anything like that. — Mitchel Musso

Master Kell," said Alucard, cheerfully. "What an unexpected pleasure, running into you here." His voice had a natural undercurrent of laughter in it, and Kell could never tell if he was being mocked.
"I don't see how it's unexpected," said Kell, "as I live here. What is unexpected is running into you, since I thought I made myself quite clear the last time we met."
"Quite," echoed Alucard.
"Then what were you doing in my brother 's chambers?"
Alucard raised a single studded brow. "Do you want a detailed account? Or will a summary suffice? — V.E Schwab

Eliot, I love you like the brother I never had or wanted, — Lev Grossman

I knew Chaz was a good guy, if misguided and gullible. He'd swallowed Buck's side of what happened between us, had argued with Erin that maybe I was drunk that night and didn't remember everything clearly. He was probably one of those boys to whom rapists were ugly men who jumped out of bushes, assaulting random girls. Rapists weren't your nice-guy coworker, or your frat brother, or your best friend. Maybe it never occurred to him that his best friend was capable of ripping a girl's self-confidence away in the span of five minutes. — Tammara Webber

Ty grabbed my phone and threatened to tell Otter that I liked being spanked during sex.
This proceeded to lead up on a long tangent where I had to have him explain to me how he knows about stuff like people getting spanked during sex. H said he might have heard it mentioned while watching MSNBC. I told him he was grounded from watching the news channels for a week. That's where this whole sidebar should have ended, but then I was forced to explain S & M and bondage to my little brother, who was persistent on the topic, and who kept staring at me with mounting horror when I finally /did/ explain, and I realized I had maybe gone too far, and we had to spend the next five minutes swearing to God that I had never nor would I ever attempt to do anything like that. He might now be the only nine-year-old who has heard the terms "cock ring" and "fisting". My parenting skills are unparalleled. — T.J. Klune

Sorry. Bad joke. I didn't know things were serious between you."
"I never said they were serious."
Phillip laughed, then winced as his lip wept. "Brother, did you ever. I guess I never figured you'd be the
first of us to fall in love with a woman."
The stomach that Phillip's fists had abused jittered wildly. "Who said I'm in love with her?"
"You didn't punch me in the face because you're in like." He looked down at his pleated slacks. "Shit.
Do you know how hard it is to get bloodstains out of a cotton blend — Nora Roberts

What story will you tell me?" "What kind of story would you like?" "An exciting story. One with an exotic climate and mortal peril." He had to smile at the relish in her voice. "Do we have bloodthirsty warring factions in this story?" "No war, please." She'd lost a brother to the Corsican's armies. He'd forgotten that, though she never would. "You want a happy ending, then?" She studied her teacup for a thoughtful moment. "I don't admit to my family that I still want the happy endings and wishes to come true. A mature woman should just take life as it comes, and I do have a great deal to be grateful for." "But a mature woman should also be honest with herself, and with me. You're allowed to wish for the happy endings, Sophie. For yourself and for Kit too." When — Grace Burrowes

I wasn't trying to reach England. or Paris. I thought that if I made the broadcast powerful enough, my brother would hear me. That I could bring him some peace, protect him as he had always protected me."

You'd play your brother's own voice to him? After he died?"

"And Debussy."

Did he ever talk back?"

The attic ticks. What ghosts sidle along the walls right now, trying to overhear? She can almost taste her great-uncle's fright in the air.

"No," he says. "He never did. — Anthony Doerr

Early on, before rock 'n' roll, I listened to big band music - anything that came over the radio - and music played by bands in hotels that our parents could dance to. We had a big radio that looked like a jukebox, with a record player on the top. The radio/record player played 78rpm records. When we moved to that house, there was a record on there, with a red label. It was Bill Monroe, or maybe it was the Stanley Brothers. I'd never heard anything like that before. Ever. And it moved me away from all the conventional music that I was hearing. — Bob Dylan

After a minute I leaned back, elbows on the table, and looked up for the twinkle of the first star in the evening sky. When we were little, it was a ritual Finn and I did on the front porch. He'd make his wish silently, and I would too, but I never could keep a secret; and I'd tell him what I wished every time. He'd always tell me it wouldn't come true, but I didn't believe him. I'd had plenty of them come true, from a new box of crayons showing up out of nowhere to a bag of candy left on my bed. It had been a while, though, and the only thing I'd wish for now was impossible. I found the first star in a patch of burnt-orange sky, above the crinkly purple mountains in the distance, and then I wished my brother back anyway. — Jessi Kirby

You're correct that I've never experienced poverty, but you've never experienced a man you've grown up with for 20 years, more brother than friend, try to assassinate you because another man wanted what was yours. You've never had your older sister gouge you in the leg with a throwing star and try to end your life. You've never had to live every day knowing the only thing between you and a body bag is a good bodyguard and the people who would kill you being too afraid of what you'd do if they failed. — Sam Mariano

I think that when we talk about education I was also blessed to talk with my dear brother Arne Duncan. I had never met him, the secretary of Education. We had a wonderful talk. And I had told him quite explicitly education is a right, it's not a race to the top. — Cornel West

Pauline, what would you do if your own brother had a party and didn't invite you?' I said ifn I really wanted to go to that party, I reckoned I'd go anyhow. Never mind what he want. She just sucked her teeth a little and made out like what I said was dumb. All the while I was thinking how dumb she was. Whoever told her that her brother was her friend? Folks can't like folks just 'cause they has the same mama. — Toni Morrison

When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa. — Miriam Makeba

I was lonely, deadly lonely. And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness.
It was years before I woke up without that longing for a face pressed against my breast, an arm about my shoulder. The sense of loss was there.
I never was so unhappy, never felt so great the sense of loneliness. No matter how many times I gave up mother, father, husband, brother, daughter, for His sake, I had to do it over again.
Tamar is partly responsible for the title of this book in that when I was beginning it she was writing me about how alone a mother of young children always is. I had also just heard from an old woman who lived a long and full life, and she too spoke of her loneliness — Dorothy Day

I try to act cool. I've never had a hand on my thigh, under the table. Cathy - my brother's wife - is telling a very funny story about the family's trips to Bridlington, and her elderly Grandmother is doling out peas, which makes the experience even stranger. — Charlotte Stein

Simon I've been trying to call you, but it seems like your phone is turned off. I don't know where you are right now. I don't know if Clary's already told you what happened tonight. But I have to go to Magnus's and I'd really like you to be there.
I'm scared for my brother. I never ask you for anything, Simon, but I'm asking you now.
Please come.
Isabelle.
Simon let the letter fall from his hand. He was out of the apartment and on his way down the steps before it had even hit the floor. — Cassandra Clare

George, his only brother, had merely been fourteen, still in high school. Their Uncle Roger had taken George in. George had lived rent-free for many years, too many years, never caring to get a job or make a living. Jim and I often wondered if so much coddling had incapacitated George to the point that he couldn't, or wouldn't, stand on his own two feet. He was — Diana Orgain

My brother, Langston, said, "Lily, you don't understand because you've never been in love. If you had a boyfriend, you'd understand." Langston has a new boyfriend and all I understand from that is a sorry state of co-dependence. — Rachel Cohn