Quotes & Sayings About Family Uncles

Picture the Bay of Bengal as an expanse of tropical water: still and blue in the calm of the January winter, or raging and turbid with silt at the peak of the summer rains. Picture it in two dimensions on a map, overlaid with a web of shipping channels and telegraph cables and inscribed with lines of distance. Now imagine the sea as a mental map: as a family tree of cousins, uncles, sisters, sons, connected by letters and journeys and stories. Think of it as a sea of debt, bound by advances and loans and obligations. Picture the Bay of Bengal even where it is absent - deep in the Malaysian jungle, where Hindu shrines sprout from the landscape as if washed up by the sea, left behind. — Sunil S. Amrith

I'll tell ya this: I come from an educated family. My father was an attorney representing blue collar workers, and my uncle was a chemical engineer ... on my mom's side, all my uncles were engineers - all ten of them. — Joe Piscopo

I was in Vietnam, and I was exposed to Agent Orange. And there's a high relationship between people that were exposed to Agent Orange and the kind of lymphoma that I had. The prostate cancer was genetic in my family. My father had prostate cancer, my - three of my four uncles had prostate cancer. — Hamilton Jordan

I come from a family where soccer has always been very present. My uncles, my father and my brother were all players. — Ronaldinho

I did grow up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, around a lot of my mom's family. I had a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles around me, and my sisters and my brother. Probably the most formative part of it was that we grew up on the edge of a forest. It wasn't a big forest, but it was enough. When you're a kid, it feels gigantic. — Mark Ruffalo

Our most important and powerful assignments are in the family. They are important because the family has the opportunity at the start of a child's life to put feet firmly on the path home. Parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles are made more powerful guides and rescuers by the bonds of love that are the very nature of a family. — Henry B. Eyring

The novelist Dumas would one day borrow features from both of his uncles, not to mention his grandfather, the acknowledged scoundrel, in fashioning the central villains of The Count of Monte Cristo. Reading court documents detailing the sordid unraveling of Charles's sham fortune, which would have devastating effects on his daughter and her unsuspecting husband, I couldn't help thinking that one of the interesting things about Dumas's villains is that, while greedy and unprincipled themselves, they produce children who can be innocent and decent. This was something that the writer understood very well from his own family. — Tom Reiss

If the Word truly became flesh, then God had not only a mother, but also a grandmother, cousins, great-aunts, and weird uncles. If the Word truly dwelt among us, then he was part of a family that, like most, was fairly dysfunctional, a mix of the good and bad, the saintly and the sinful, the glorious and the not so glorious. And this is such good news for us. — Robert Barron

I discovered that our clan included loads of cousins and uncles and aunts and animals of every shape. I was taught that chaos and competition were family values. And I learned that we all loved the sea. Somehow, the sea was about us-our past, our exuberance, our frailty, our longing. — Timothy Shriver

My aunts told wonderful stories. Not to me, but to each other. We had a very strong family. My mother's sisters loved each other intensely. The uncles loved each other intensely. — Barry Hannah

When I was a boy, one of my uncles had a cabin on a lake in Wisconsin. My family went there for parts of three summers, and I loved it! — Kevin Henkes

My parents' names were Florian and Mabel Smith. My mother's maiden name was Dersam. They were of German heritage and were part of a family community with my grandparents and uncles and relatives. I was an only child. — Paul Smith

Junk runs in the family. My granddad was a junk man in St. Louis and so was my uncle. — Redd Foxx

Families need families. Parents need to be parented. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles are back in fashion because they are necessary. Stresses on many families are out of proportion to anything two parents can handle. — T. Berry Brazelton

I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own. Maybe you would feel lost in the crowd. Or sheltered by it. Whatever the case, one things was for sure: like it or not, you'd never be alone. — Sarah Dessen

Everyone always says, Does it bother you that Italians are always portrayed as Mafia characters? No, it doesn't bother me. First of all, not everybody in my family is in the Mafia. I have one uncle who's clean. — Dom Irrera

My grandmother refused to concede that any member of the family died of natural causes. An uncle's cancer in middle age occurred because all the suitcases fell off the luggage rack onto him when he was in his teens, and so forth. Death was an acquired characteristic. — Renata Adler

My family's tradition of 'matching-matching' names is so obsessive, it's against the order of nature. When my uncles Anil and Anant married, they took advantage of a heinous custom in Marathi weddings. After the pheras, a dish of uncooked rice is placed before the newlyweds, and whatever name the husband chooses to write in the rice becomes the new name of his wife.
Because marriage in our culture is akin to buying a puppy at a pet shop and saying, 'I am your new owner, and I shall call you Flu y.'
So Anil Adarkar brought home Asha Adarkar (nee Kiran), and Anant Adarkar brought home Anita Adarkar (nee Geeta). And to complete this picture of divine perfection they named their children Aniket, and Ashwini and Ashleysha, respectively. — Nikita Deshpande

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

I come from a stupid family. During the civil war my great uncle fought for the west. — Rodney Dangerfield

I'm the only Red in our family! You know my father, my brother, my brother-in-law, my 14-year-old niece and two of my uncles are all City season ticket holders. So I'm gonna say 5-0 to United! — Ian Brown

I don't have many actors in my family, but I do have a Great Uncle that is a film-maker in Philadelphia, and my great-great-grandparents were Flamenco dancers in the 30's in New York, they were Spanish dancers. — Aubrey Plaza

I love being from a screwed up family. We have everything in my family: prescription drug abuse, mental illness, one of my uncles is a Mormon. — Christopher Titus

No one ever said, 'Be a doctor.' But because so many members of my extended family - aunts, uncles - were doctors, there was this expectation that I'd probably be a physician. — Elizabeth Blackburn

I had two family members involved in World War I: two great-uncles. One of them is on a memorial in France. And the other was a trench runner who survived the war. The average life span of a trench runner was 36 hours, but he survived the whole war. — Ben Barnes

I think some of my inspiration came from just being around music. My family was into music. My uncle had his own band and my father use to sing in my uncle's band. If you want to go to the music influences we could be here all day. That's everybody from Michael Jackson all the way up to people in the game now that inspire me. — Nelly

I am the lucky duck because I have family . My wonderful aunt and uncle are letting me crash on their couch, which isn't really a couch ... I have a room! It's been kind of a blessing for the cast because all of us have gotten so close, not knowing anyone in Atlanta. All the guys on the show have become kind of like brothers, and all of us girls are pretty inseparable. — Candice Accola

Dale's family is like that. Let the Law come within twenty yards of them, and every male over the age of six
uncles, brother, father, cousins
starts lying his fool head off. Dale says it's genetic. Miss Lana says that's poppycock. — Sheila Turnage

I was blessed to have family members who encouraged me to pursue my dreams. Whether it is your parents, or your uncles or your aunts or even the neighbor down the road, it's important that kids have someone who encourages them to chase their rainbow. — Dolly Parton

Our most basic institution of family desperately needs help and support from the extended family and the public institutions that surround us. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins can make a powerful difference in the lives of children. Remember that the expression of love and encouragement from an extended family member will often provide the right influence and help a child at a critical time. — M. Russell Ballard

When I think of my background, if I was privileged on any level, it was in terms of the kind of exposure to experience and bohe-mian cultural influence that my parents and my uncles and my grandfather gave me. On both sides I come from an extremely eccentric, artsy, intellectually intense, activist family. — Edward Norton

I come from an enormous and very close family. I have over a dozen aunts and uncles in Pakistan, dozens of cousins. I have many close friends. I have received so much love in Lahore that the city always pulls me. — Mohsin Hamid

The closer the genetic relationship of the family members, as for example father-to-son, as opposed to uncle-to-nephew, the higher the degree of cooperation. — E. O. Wilson

My identity has always been confused. Born in Edinburgh of a Scottish/Russian/Jewish mother and an English/Irish/Catholic father, there is no form of guilt to which I was not subjected in my childhood. Members of my immediate family live all over the world - a diaspora of cousins, aunts, uncles and more in a dizzying mix. — Sara Sheridan

We forget sometimes that parents--even uncles--have lives of their own. Worlds of their own. Sides of themselves we never see and never dream are there. Even when someone describes those lives to us, we can't believe them. We know better. — Julianna Deering

What was the difference between Anne Frank and any other 15 year old girl living the same nightmare? Nothing! Aside from the fact that Anne spoke through her writings while others kept silent. Someone very special to me recently asked how can I write such personal things as child abuse, relationship problems, sexual addiction, and not fear how the family will feel about these revealings. I have the audacity to write such things because it's MY story. Not my parents, not my brothers, not my aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents... MINE. Note to those contemplating writing nonfiction. Write the story. It's yours to tell. Nevermind how your family will feel. Those that love you will not judge you. I promise. Do not let your testimony be in vain. — Katandra Jackson Nunnally

My family is really, really Southern - I had two uncle Bubbas, and grandparents that we called Big Mama and Big Daddy. — Laura Lippman

England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control - that, perhaps is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase. — George Orwell

The Marine Corps is your family too. You may not have a mother here, but you have a shit pile of fathers, uncles, and brothers. — Bud Rudesill

It [England] is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. — George Orwell

My uncle, Mr. Stephen Maple, had been at the same time the most successful and the least respectable of our family, so that we hardly knew whether to take credit for his wealth or to feel ashamed of his position. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I wasn't actually going to see the original film [Lord of the Ring], because I didn't think it was possible that a film could represent the books appropriately. So I was protesting, and I wasn't going to see them. And then my family all took a jaunt together, the entire family, to see the movies, and were like, "What, you're just going to stay home?" So I saw the movies and was thoroughly impressed that Peter Jackson managed to make my vision of the book come to life, as well as my sister's and my father's, and my aunt's and my uncle's, everyone's. — Evangeline Lilly

On the one hand, I was happy to have a proper diagnosis. Aside from a trust fund and a royal title, that was really the only thing I'd ever wanted in life. On the other hand, I was offended to learn that my brain was defective. Or, I suppose I should say, "differently abled."
One thing I was not was surprised. Four generations of manic depression on my mother's side of the family. Three of autism on my father's side. Drug addict uncles, a pyromaniac cousin, a couple of schizophrenics and suicides, several flesh-and-blood geniuses, and a pecan farmer. You just cannot mix those raw ingredients together and then stick them inside my mother for nine months and expect something normal to come out. It's a wonder I wasn't born with a set of horns. — Augusten Burroughs

Everyone had an uncle who tried to steal their nose. — Peter Kay

I come from a stupid family. My uncle heard that most deaths occurs within ten miles of the house ... so he moved. — Rodney Dangerfield

My family is certainly very vocal. They're very Italian. A lot of our holidays end with people screaming at each other across the room. And everyone's very opinionated and intelligent. A lot of my aunts and uncles are wildly educated, and their opinions reflect that. We're all very liberal. — Chris Evans

In truth, I am a single mother. But I don't feel alone at all in parenting my daughter. Krishna has a whole other side of her family who loves her, too. And so Krishna is parented by me, but also by her grandmother and aunts and cousins and uncles and friends. — Padma Lakshmi

We saved the lives of a whole family that night. Children, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, all sailed to safety in Sweden inside a little fisherman's boat."

Johannes aka 'BB'
The Informer by Steen Langstrup — Steen Langstrup

She say, 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. Now if you want a dead son-in-law you just keep on advising him like you doing. She put her hand on her hip. I used to hunt game with a bow and arrow, she say. — Alice Walker

I was possessed with a wonderful example of my Italian American family. They would come over and join us every Sunday, all my aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces, and I would sing for them. — Tony Bennett

I grew up in a house that was always happy, and my family was always music, music. I started playing percussion very young, because I had some uncles who were musicians and all my aunts were singers. — Ronaldinho

I had a wonderful family including my aunts, uncles and cousins but they've all gone to heaven. — Doris Day

Bobby's World touched a lot of people. That's why the family's last name is Generic. Uncle Ted is based on uncles we've all had. — Howie Mandel

The notes one of my uncles (who had the same kind of curiosity in collecting family anecdotes) once put into my hands, furnished me with several particulars relating to our ancestors. — Benjamin Franklin

My uncle was the first one in my family to get a telephone. It was like going to the moon. He came running over to tell us, and we were so proud. A telephone! We didn't have to go to the candy store to phone any more. We went around telling everyone. But we didn't hear from my uncle for three days, so my father got worried. He said, Let's go over there. We got there, and my uncle was very depressed. I asked, What's the matter? He said, I got a telephone and nobody called me. He didn't give his number out - he didn't know that you had to! — Pat Cooper

'Halal in the Family' will expose a broad audience to some of the realities of being Muslim in America. By using satire, we will encourage people to reconsider their assumptions about Muslims, while providing a balm to those experiencing anti-Muslim bias. I also hope those Uncles and Aunties out there will crack a smile! — Aasif Mandvi

My whole family is very artistic - my uncles are all actors and theatre directors. — Morena Baccarin

I was brought up to look after my parents. My family were Polish Jews, and we lived with my grandmother, with uncles and aunts and cousins all around, and I thought everybody lived like that. — Anita Brookner

Calling a nuclear group with a mom and a pop and their kids a family is like calling a field of bluestem a prairie. It's the rich diversity of grasses and forbs that makes a prairie work, just as it's the rich diversity of parents and children, grandparents and cousins, aunts and uncles providing nourishment and support that makes a family work. — Faith A. Colburn

When I was a little bitty kid, my aunt showed me how to play a little boogie. It took me years. I had to play the left-hand part with two hands, because my hands was so little. Then as I grew up and I learned how to play the left-hand part with one hand, she showed me how to play the right-hand part, and et cetera. My Uncle Joe showed me how to play a little bit different boogie stuff. I had people in my family that was professional musicians, but I just wasn't interested in what they did. I wasn't very open-minded to a lot of music that I'd be more open to today. — Dr. John

Mobile is a seaport town, and we ate a lot of seafood. We'd go fishing, we'd catch our fish and we'd eat our fish. It was a ritual on Saturday morning for all my family - my grandfather, my brothers, my uncles, my father - to go fishing, and then the ladies of the family would clean the fish and fry them up. — Billy Williams

Are. To have people cut you dead, or look at you with contempt, or have your friends and family turn their backs - You don't know what that's like. I don't want you to know what that's like. God damn it, I saw your face when you thought your uncles would get those bloody photographs! — K.J. Charles

On the whole, my family had always adopted a reserved attitude toward Zionism; my great-uncle Edmond had acted on his own in generously supporting Jewish Palestine, for reasons more humanitarian and religious than political. But the devastation caused by the war and the extermination of six million Jews radically changed all of our former attitudes. The idea of a Jewish homeland acquired an intense emotional appeal; I myself became an ardent Zionist.. — Guy De Rothschild

from The Ninja and The Diplomat (coming in September 2015)--As an unintended but ineluctable consequence of the one child policy, he and his wife, like most of his generation and those succeeding, consisted of only children; hence his family included no aunts or uncles, no cousins, and no nieces or nephews. The Chinese family had lost an immeasurable dimension of richness. — Hock G. Tjoa

Art was a way of life in my family. My grandfather, N.C. Wyeth, who died a year before I was born, had been a prominent painter. So was my father, Andrew. My two aunts and two of my uncles also earned a living as painters. — Jamie Wyeth

My family has always had Cape Verdean pride but I don't think it was something the kids in the family necessarily understood. However, I was very conscious of the fact that both sides of my family were drastically different and my aunts, cousins, and uncles varied in different shades of brown. — Aeriel Miranda

Amish children are usually named after aunts or uncles or some other relation. Keeps the family names going. — Sarah Price

When I was a child, our whole family cooked. All my cousins cooked. All my aunts and uncles cooked. It was part of our heritage. — Mario Batali

Music just runs in my family. My dad and my uncles are a gospel quartet, Latimore Brothers. They've been doing their thing ever since I was a kid, so I just kind of grew up around that. — Jacob Latimore

I was the youngest of four kids, and Dad, who had a garden centre before he retired, came from a large Lancashire family. Every one of my uncles had their own business, including a post office, two fish and chip shops and a painting and decorating business. — Rick Astley

What did people do with enormous families? All those cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews. How did they keep them straight? How did they breathe at any sort of family function? — J.D. Robb