Quotes & Sayings About Gathering With Family

No, in the Bolitar household, the kitchen was more a gathering place - a Family Room Lite, if you will - than anything related to even the basest of the culinary arts. The round table held magazines and catalogs and congealing white boxes of Chinese takeout. The stove top saw less action than a Merchant-Ivory production. The oven was a prop, strictly for show, like a politician's Bible. — Harlan Coben

An old Gordita reflex, dating back to shortly after the Second World War, when a black family had actually tried to move into town and the citizens, with helpful advice from the Ku Klux Klan, had burned the place to the ground and then, as if some ancient curse had come into effect, refused to allow another house ever to be built on the site. The lot stood empty until the town finally confiscated it and turned it into a park, where the youth of Gordita Beach, by the laws of karmic adjustment, were soon gathering at night to drink, dope, and fuck, depressing their parents, though not property values particularly. — Thomas Pynchon

Another night then,' Mom said. 'Maybe on the weekend we can have a barbecue and invite your sister.'
'Or,' I said turning to Rafe, 'if you want to skip the whole awkward meet-the-family social event you could just submit your life story including your view on politics religion and every social issue imaginable along with anything else you think they might need to conduct a thorough background check.'
Mom sighed. 'I really don't know why we even bother trying to be subtle around you.'
'Neither do I. It's not like he isn't going to realize he's being vetted as daughter-dating material.'
Rafe grinned. 'So we are dating.'
'No. You have to pass the parental exam first. It'll take you awhile to compile the data. They'd like it in triplicate.' I turned to my parents. 'We have Kenjii. We have my cell phone. Since we aren't yet officially dating I'm sure you'll agree that's all the protection we need.'
Dad choked on his coffee. — Kelley Armstrong

Honeybees are social insects and live in colonies. Each colony is a family unit, comprising a single, egg-laying female or queen and her many sterile daughters called workers. The workers cooperate in the food-gathering, nest-building and rearing the offspring. Males are reared only at the times of the year when their presence is required. — Christopher O'Toole

Gathering of the Vibes is a gathering of the elders, a gathering of the youth, a gathering of family — Steve Kimock

People are less than whole unless they gather themselves voluntarily into groups of souls in harmony. Gathering themselves to pursue individual, family, and community dreams consistent with their private humanity is what makes them whole; only slaves are gathered by others. — John Taylor Gatto

We live in a complicated society, Bromley - one that is changing and which does indeed need to change. But do you not think any change must begin within our own family gathering? — P.J. Parker

We lie with our faces because that's what we've been taught to do since early childhood. "Don't make that face," our parents growl when we honestly react to the food placed in front of us. "At least look happy when your cousins stop by," they instruct, and you learn to force a smile. Our parents - and society - are, in essence, telling us to hide, deceive, and lie with our faces for the sake of social harmony. So it is no surprise that we tend to get pretty good at it, so good, in fact, that when we put on a happy face at a family gathering, we might look as if we love our in-laws when, in reality, we are fantasizing about how to hasten their departure. — Joe Navarro

It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when they do not fit and draw new ones. — John Steinbeck

I think, in life, being nervous about something that's forthcoming is very helpful, whether it's an awards show or a family gathering or a job interview. If you're too calm and confident, then I think you aren't executing to the best of your ability. So I try not to let nerves get the best of me, but I welcome them because it tends to fuel me to try harder. — Neil Patrick Harris

Beyond a certain point, gathering further evidence of the hurtfulness and shortcomings of one's family, employer, et cetera is like eating the same poisonous mushroom over and over and expecting that sooner or later it will be nutritious. — Mark Vonnegut

For as long as I could remember, I'd been making vague and confident assurances that any day I would finish the thing [my book]. If and when I ever did, they would probably feel an almost physical sense of relief. I was like a massively incompetent handyman who'd been up on their roof now for years, trying to take down a gnarled old lightning-struck tree trunk that had fallen against the house, haunting every gathering, all discussions of family business, any attempt they made to sit down together and plan for the future, with the remote but ceaseless whining of my saw. — Michael Chabon

I was a meek child who bloomed into something untamed and out of place. Just as I never mastered the skill of walking on my own two feet, I never acquired southern social etiquette. Whenever I was at a family gathering, tension surrounded me. Everyone always wondered, "What the hell is Maggie going to say next?" My mother cleverly masked her true feelings with her pretty, young face and consistent, bright smile. I, as her daughter, was a representation of her. And she was carrying a time bomb in a nursery. In a world where it was impolite to air one's dirty laundry, I wore my most ragged, period-stained panties as a trendy accessory. — Maggie Young

You have no idea how well you are doing, John complimented me
just a few minutes after he mentioned the Christmas card. What did that mean: That I was doing well? That I'd come to a family gathering? That I'd remembered to bring food? That I was dressed, and my hair combed? That I was wearing shoes? I wasn't sure, but maybe just making an appearance at a family event meant I was handling things well. — Mary Potter Kenyon

It's all about loyalty and collaboration, gathering your gang around you, finding your soulmate in filmmaking because it is a collaborative process. When failure happens, that family you gathered regroups around you and gives you the fresh energy you're lacking. — Matthew Jacobs

Sometimes when we're suffering we feel as if we have been singled out. We wonder why God has picked on us. But my life as the rabbi of a small synagogue taught me that if that's what we think, we are mistaken. We are never alone in our suffering. Scratch the surface of any family, any social gathering, any congregation, and you will find loss and pain there. We may not always be privy to the pain, but it is there just the same. If we had the power to peer inside the heart of any human being, we would uncover there a silent anguish. — Naomi Levy

I was only then, when I knew I was alone, at least for the moment, that I reached under my gown into the pocket of my dress. As I pulled out my key from the yellow house, which I'd kept on my bureau since the day Nate left, I traced the shape one last time before folding my hand tightly around it.
Behind me, Cora was calling again. My family was waiting. Looking down at the pond, all I could think was that it is an incredible thing, how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all. I stepped closer to the edge, keeping my eyes on my reflection as I dropped the key into the water, where it landed with a splash. At first, the fish darted away, but as it began to sink they circled back, gathering around. Together, they followed it down, down until it was gone.<3 — Sarah Dessen

In the beginning God did not make a church or cathedral, he made a family. In the beginning God did not appoint apostles, or prophets, or pastors etc, he appointed a husband and a wife in the covenant of marriage. In Genesis, the first mankind gathering was a wedding ceremony, and not a worship meeting. After God, the next thing that came was marriage. — Taka Sande

What greater blessing to give thanks for at a family gathering than the family and the gathering. — Robert Breault

In spite of my conviction that a group of deliberately assembled relatives can be one of the dullest, if not most dangerous, gatherings in the world, I am smugly foolhardly enough to have invited all my available family, more than once, to dine with me. — M.F.K. Fisher

You wanted a family. It doesn't get much more typical than an eccentric cougar sexually assaulting a hot, yet quirky uncle at a family gathering, — Randi Cooley Wilson

On Christmas morning when the beach is calling and the family's gathering and the presents are a mystery (or definitely feels book-shaped anyway), and after the splendour and celebration of Christmas Eve, we don't want Christmas Day to be an anticlimax. We've gifted our Oxfam goats or geese and bought our CWS calendars, and what we'd like, on Christmas Day, what we really want, is for things to be - perfect. Just like the old days. Something new, but also something familiar.
And that's what's so wonderful about the Christmas story, and why preachers penning their reflections approach with trepidation but also with joy: at Christmas, the news is all good. — Bronwyn Angela White

The Puritanical nonsense of excluding children and therefore to some extent women from pubs has turned these places into mere boozing shops instead of the family gathering places that they ought to be. — George Orwell

Don't you know that's what college is about ... students spending years gathering useless information they'll never use again, going hopelessly into debt, just so they feel smarter than the rest of their family? I mean, that's why I worked so hard to get here, anyway. — A.L. Jackson

The time will come when only those who believe deeply and actively in the family will be able to preserve their families in the midst of the gathering evil around us. — Spencer W. Kimball

Meanwhile in Wichita, Kansas, Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors who performs late-term abortions - only about 1 percent of all procedures but crucial when, for instance, a fetus develops without a brain - is shot in both arms by a female picketer. He recovers and continues serving women who come to him from many states. I finally meet Dr. Tiller in 2008 at a New York gathering of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. I ask him if he has ever helped a woman who was protesting at his clinic. He says: "Of course, I'm there to help them, not to add to their troubles. They probably already feel guilty." In 2009 Dr. Tiller is shot in the head at close range by a male activist hiding inside the Lutheran church where the Tiller family worships each Sunday. This is done in the name of being "pro-life. — Gloria Steinem

Entitlement breeds laziness, which in turn breeds decline. But of course with enough money, it is possible not to notice for decades that your family name is gathering dust. — Matthew FitzSimmons

If minutes were kept of a family gathering, they would show that "Members not Present" and "Subjects Discussed" were one and the same. — Robert Breault