My Parents Died Quotes & Sayings

I should've died with my parents ... than live in this world," I say, my voice is faint
He asks, "Why choose to die if you can live this world?" He chuckled.
I gave him a faint smile and say, "A world so hateful, some would rather die, than be who they are. — Alyanna Mallari

My sister and I were born in San Francisco. When our parents died, we came down here to live with relatives. — Freddy Fender

A country is mostly the people in it," Maud said. "I don't love England. My parents died a long time ago, and my brother has disowned me. I love Germany. For me, Germany is my wonderful husband, Walter; my misguided son, Erik; my alarmingly capable daughter, Carla; our maid, Ada, and her disabled son; my friend Monika and her family; my journalistic colleagues . . . I'm staying, to fight the Nazis. — Ken Follett

God brought me to Himself at about the age of 4. My parents were devout believers and my Dad was in Bible College at the time. I remember hearing the gospel in Sunday School and I talked to my Mom about it one night before bed. It was clear to me that I was a sinner and I was not going to heaven if I died without accepting Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross for me. I was brought to Christ out of fear of going to hell. I didn't want to go there if I died and there was only one other choice in my mind as a 4 year old. I wanted to go to heaven. It was and is that simple. — Ben Zobrist

In some ways, forcing me to leave was the best thing that could have happened to me. In other ways, it was a disaster. I'm still glad they did it though, because I think I might have just died if I had stayed at the coast. Although I ended up there a couple years later, when my mother relapsed on a whim, I think I needed that two years away from that horrible little coastal town where time is frozen and ideas creep forward too slow to notice any progress. — Ashly Lorenzana

When my sister was released from the mental hospital, she came to live with me in the tilting and crumbling one-bedroom house I'd bought with the small amount of money I inherited when our parents died. She arrived one afternoon unannounced in a taxi. She must have known instinctively that I'd take her in. I don't know how or why they released her. Probably due to overcrowding, and they had her scratch her name on a form then pushed her out the door. Or maybe she just slipped away when no one was looking (who'd notice in a place like that?)
she never did tell me and I didn't ask her. I was so happy to have her with me again that the last thing I wanted to do was break the spell by letting reality intrude. Ever since they'd dragged her away weeping with laughter and reaching out for me with our parents' blood still coating her hands with shiny red gloves, I'd felt amputated, like they'd pulled her kicking and screaming and insane out of my guts. — Michael Gira

When I was 19 years old, both of my parents died in the same year; my mom of cancer and my dad in a car accident. Through the next two or three years and a series of bad decisions - all my own, I might add - I ended up literally homeless, before that was even a word. I even slept occasionally under a pier on the Gulf Coast. — Andy Andrews

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together — Joseph Addison

My dad? He died when I was 19, which is a bad time for your dad to die, because there's an awful lot of things you have to resolve with your parents past your teens if you've been a difficult teenager. — Robbie Coltrane

Since my brother died in 1982, my parents and I had formed a shaky tripod of a family; now that I'd lost my father too, it was too easy for me to glimpse a future point where I alone was the keeper of not just my own childhood memories, but of my family lore. — Ann Hood

My mother just died at 103, so that's a start. You should live 20 years longer than your parents. — Rupert Murdoch

My parents were not musical, and they were not effervescent people; everything was very quiet. The music that I played was loud; it used to drive them up the wall. My father died, and that was a tragedy for everybody, but suddenly I didn't have anybody to stop me from doing what I wanted to do. — Don McLean

My son, who is five, was adopted from Ethiopia. My daughter was adopted from Guatemala. Her parents died of typhoid and malaria. We got her from an orphanage. They are the lights of my life. — Lisa Kristine

My benefactor told me that my father and mother had lived and died just to have me, and that their own parents had done the same for them. He said that warriors were different in that they shift their assemblage points enough to realize the tremendous price that has been paid for their lives. This shift gives them the respect and awe that their parents never felt for life in general, or for being alive in particular. — Carlos Castaneda

My parents deeply and truly loved each other, and if my mother hadn't died they would have been together forever. They were together for as much of forever as was given to them. They really loved my brother and me and were very good to us. It gave the model of how to have a happy marriage and family, but it also set the bar very high. — Andrew Solomon

My parents ... They died today ... They died for me. -Tris
They loved you ... To them there was no better way to show you. -Four — Veronica Roth

As I sat alone at my desk in the dark, I thought about suicide. Sometimes I did that, thought about suicide, though not in an active way - it was more like pulling a lucky stone out of your back pocket. It was a comforting thing to have with you, so you could rub your fingers over it, reassure yourself that it was there if you needed it. I didn't want to try to kill myself, didn't want the blood and the hysterical parents and the guilt, any of it. But sometimes I liked the idea of simply not having to be here anymore, not having to deal with my life. As if death could be just an extended vacation.
But now what I thought about suicide was this: If I died tonight, everyone would believe this journal was true.
Like Amelia, Chava, and Sally, everyone would forever believe that I had written that diary. Everyone would believe they knew how I "really felt." And how dare they? — Leila Sales

Can I be a modern girl, if I acknowledge such thoughts? I must be modern; I live now. But like everybody else, as Hollier says, I live in a muddle of eras, and some of my ideas belong to today, and some to an ancient past, and some to periods of time that seem more relevant to my parents than to me. If I could sort them and control them I might know better where I stand, but when I most want to be contemporary the Past keeps pushing in, and when I long for the Past (like when I wish Tadeusz had not died, and were with me now to guide and explain and help me to find where I belong in life) the Present cannot be pushed away. When I hear girls I know longing to be what they call liberated, and when I hear others rejoicing in what they think of as liberation, I feel a fool, because I simply do not know where I stand. — Robertson Davies

Please don't hate you??!! I hate that I love you. Loving you made me waste a year of my life. Loving
you made me be passionate about nothing but you. Loving you made me take risks I never would have
otherwise. Loving you made me give it up to you. Loving you made me neglect my parents and Amy.
Loving you made me not care that my grandma just died. Loving you made me turn out bitter and
hopeless like her. Loving you made me hate myself for being dumped by you. Loving you made me
deluded, irrational, inconsiderate, and a liar. And because I love you, you're always going to haunt me. — Daria Snadowsky

We heard recently the touching story of a young flier who was killed in action. Before he died, he had time to scrawl only a few words as a brief final message to his parents back home. The note read: "Dear Mom and Pop; I had time to say my prayers. Jack." — James Keller

I bought my parents a home before they died, and they got to see that I was going to be all right. They always thought I would go someplace. — Richard Pryor

I have one brother, John, an airline pilot, who is seven years younger. He's adopted, though we're still blood related - he's my cousin. My parents couldn't have any more children after me, so when Dad's brother died, they adopted John, then just a baby. — Gary Numan

Your parents died. Your world fell apart."
I nod.
He puts his hand on my cheek. "You were left drowning"
I nod again.
"And you're struggling to breathe"
I am. It's a constant struggle to stay near the surface I have just enough air to stop me from going totally under, but not enough to thrive.
"So do it. Breathe. Just Breathe." He turns up the volume and strokes my hair. — Jessica Park

I'm starting to get older, and began to think about mortality a little more. My mother died in 2003 and that was a big shock. When your parents start to die off, that's going to be a revelation. So for me, this album - although it might sound quite cheery - is really talking about death. — Donald Fagen

I had survived the work gangs in the ghetto. Baked bread under cover of night. Hidden in a pigeon coop. Had a midnight bar mitzvah in the basement of an abandoned building. I had watched my parents be taken away to their deaths, had avoided Amon Goeth and his dogs, had survived the salt mines of Wieliczka and the sick games of Trzebinia. I had done so much to live, and now, here, the Nazis were going to take all that away with their furnace!
I started to cry, the first tears I had shed since Moshe died. Why had I worked so hard to survive if it was always going to end like this? If I had known, I wouldn't have bothered. I would have let them kill me back in the ghetto. It would have been easier that way. All that I had done was for nothing. — Alan Gratz

Even before my parents died, I felt all the responsibility to my family. I don't know why. In any business, any relationship, if something goes wrong, I feel I am to blame. It's something inside me. — Mikhail Prokhorov

First my husband, then my parents died. After that I lost my two sisters. When death comes to someone's home it's as if it wants to get as much done as quickly as possible to save coming again for a long time. — Guy De Maupassant

The weird thing about grief, for me at least, was when each of my parents died, for a year or two afterwards I was pretty wildly brave - just willing to take life on. — Mike Mills

My parents were practicing Jews. My mother grew up in an orthodox synagogue, and after my grandfather died, she went to a conservative synagogue and a little later ended up in a reform synagogue. My father was in reform synagogues from the beginning. — Judith Butler

I'm mortal. I could die any day." Brandon had almost killed her. Her parents had died young. Her grandfather would have died yesterday. "I'm Warrick Voclain. And you will stay by my side until the stars fall from the sky. — Erin Kellison

Soon I will honor my parents by dying as they died. and if all they believed about death was true, soon I will join them in whatever comes next. — Veronica Roth

I came to Harlem from West Virginia when I was three, after my mother died. My father, who was very poor, gave me up to two wonderful people, my foster parents. — Walter Dean Myers

Never having been in love, this is going to be a real trick. I think of my parents. The way my father never failed to bring her gifts from the woods. The way my mother's face would light up at the sound of his boots at the door. The way she almost stopped living when he died. — Suzanne Collins

A scream is a sound we make that is born of intense feeling. A scream of fear, of being startled, is often high-pitched. It may be short or prolonged. A scream may also accompany delight or amusement, though often that is more of a squeal. And a scream of sorrow or rage ... well, that is an entirely different thing. That comes from a darker place, from the depths of our souls, and when we scream in those times, because we are sad or angry, there is a terrible knowledge that accompanies it, that we are giving voice to our emotions, to what is simply too big for our hearts to contain.
And as Li Wei cries out, I know Feng Ji is right. It is his heart I am hearing, a way of expressing what he feels over his father's loss that is both primal and beautiful, and it comes from his soul and reaches something within mine. It is the sound my own heart made when my parents died, only I didn't know it until now. — Richelle Mead

I grew up in one of the most socially conservative neighborhoods in Ohio, and my parents were traditional Catholics. But in her old age, my mother got her home health care from a guy who was gay, who was wonderful to her. Before she died, she rode a float in the Cincinnati Gay Pride Parade. — Gail Collins

I have always felt like a pawn ... My skin color's been a curse, my missionary parents made me sober and intense, my school days brought me up against political crimes against Animals, my love life imploded and my lover died, and if I had any life's work of my own, I haven't found it yet, except in animal husbandry, if you could call it that. — Gregory Maguire

When my mother died, and when my father died, it's big. Our parents are giants; they're titans of our lives, so of course it's going to be a big deal. — Loudon Wainwright III

When my late father died - now I'm in mourning for my late mother - that sense of grief and bereavement suddenly taught me that so many things that I thought were important, externals, etc., all of that is irrelevant. You lose a parent, you suddenly realize what a slender thing life is, how easily you can lose those you love. Then out of that comes a new simplicity and that is why sometimes all the pain and the tears lift you to a much higher and deeper joy when you say to the bad times, I will not let you go until you bless me. — Jonathan Sacks

After my father died when I was seven and my mother entered into an abusive relationship, I shuffled between houses - staying with friends, families from church, and relying on the kindness of teachers and people throughout my community to help me grow up essentially without parents. — Ronnie Musgrove

It's always been 'go'. It's always been 'lie' and 'hide' and 'disappear'. I've never belonged anywhere or had the right to call anything my own. But Coach gave me keys to the court, and you told me to stay. You gave me a key and called it home. I haven't had a home since my parents died. — Nora Sakavic

I was an infant when my parents died.
Thye both were ornithologists. I've tried
So often to evoke them that today
I have a thousand parents. Sadly they
Dissolve 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

That letter was your whole future, you daft prince."
"It was my past. I lost that the night my parents died. But I found you, Deryn. Maybe I wasn't meant to end the war, but I was meant to find you. I know that. You've saved me from having any reason to keep going."
"We save each other. That's how it works. — Scott Westerfeld

I lost my parents very early in my life. My mom died three weeks after I graduated from high school, and my dad died two years after I got married. — Mary Badham

When my parents died they both were 47, and they died of complications of different diseases; one being diabetes. — Stephen Furst

When my parents died, it became clear to me that there was an end in sight. Death was never a real thing to me. And then when that happened I realized I only have so many years left, if I'm lucky. — Rick Baker

My kids have moved more in their twenties, you know, than my parents have moved in nearly 40-something years of marriage before they died. So there's a part of me that laments what we have lost, and that is a sense of community. — Mike Huckabee

So far my uncle and aunt, Luke and Claire, have shown me more kindnesses in the last 24 hours than my grandmother did in the two years I lived with them before she died. They remind me of my parents in this, which fills me with more excitement than I know how to express. — AnnaLisa Grant

I didn't want to disrespect my parents, so I never played blues around the house. But I knew then, same as I know today, that I wasn't doing anything wrong. I think that before they died, they both felt very proud of me. — B.B. King

My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

For the past thirty-nine years since I had graduated from college, I had called my parents on Sundays. They had expected and looked forward to the ritual. After Dad died, I still called Mom on Sundays. Most of the time I dreaded the call because she had become more and more insular and was full of complaints about the assisted living facility, the other residents, her health, everything. She had become narrow in her interests in life, more negative, more critical, and unhappier. I was reminded of something I had heard from a psychologist about what happens as we age. He said we become more of who we are, not less. Our energy to fight back the negative attributes we all possess is not as strong as we get older. So we can become more cantankerous, more irritable. I also remembered what my father had often said: "There but for the grace of God go I." That Sunday I placed the — Janis Heaphy Durham

No, my eldest brother. He was named after our father. Our parents died when the Romans first invaded, and Stephano then became the "head of the family". " She grimaced. "He and I are like oil and water. Or we were. We get along well enough now, though." She grinned. "But boy did he pitch a fit over the concubine thing. He even called in Uncle Lucian to deal with me."

Harper's eyebrows rose. "I'm surprised Lucian bothered to intervene."

..."Yes, well..." Drina grimaced. "I'm afraid while I was een as a concubine, I was really playing puppet master with my lover and kind of ruling the country though him. At least until Uncle Lucian caught wind of it and came to give me hell. — Lynsay Sands

The afternoon my parents died, I was out shoplifting with Irene Klauson. — Emily M. Danforth

They were my parents. Dead. They died in their bed under freakish circumstances three months ago, leaving my brothers and me devastated and bankrupt. — James Patterson

Maybe it's a stretch to blame a broader social pathology on hyper-competitive soccer parents. Still, there is not a huge downside to asking every once in a while, Why am I doing this? We will know for certain that my analysis is wrong when we see the following obituary: Bob Smith died yesterday at the age of 74. He finished life in 186th place. — Charles Wheelan

I'm a good girl. I'm a nice girl. I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and brother's shit and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died,after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father ever day on the telephone
every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a big muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "Such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL. — Claire Messud

I wait for him to do what everyone else did after my parents died. Spout of some conventional words of sympathy like, I'm so sorry. How awful. You poor thing. Terribly sad...and then run. People always do. Nobody knows what to say after the initial words of supposed comfort. Death and grief make everyone around you vanish because death and grief are intolerable. — Jessica Park

Rosemary died when I was six, and when my parents told me, I cried. I wasn't sure if I had a right to, but I think now of something the British chef Nigel Slater once wrote, that it is "impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you." I think the same can be said of the person who scoops your ice cream into a dish and stands, smiling, as you eat. — Jessica Fechtor

The stories my pupils told me were astonishing. One told how he had witnessed his cousin being shot in the back five times; another how his parents had died of AIDS. Another said that he'd probably been to more funerals than parties in his young life. For me - someone who had had an idyllic, happy childhood - this was staggering. — Erin Gruwell

My father came by himself across the North Korean border when he was seventeen. And hasn't seen his brothers or sisters or parents since then. And he died some time ago, but never saw any of his relatives. My mother was a refugee in war-torn Korea. — Jim Yong Kim

After my parents died, it took me months before I could carry on a conversation with someone who had not known them, who expected me to be young and sparkling and untouched by grief. — Jennifer Egan

My father's parents were Irish. Only a year before my father died, he and I went back to Ireland for a week to look at the old homestead. — John C. Hawkes

My friend Emma, who likes things to add up neatly, claims that this is because my parents died when I was too young to take it in: they were there one day and gone the next, crashing through that fence so hard and fast they left it splintered for good. When I was Lexie Madison for eight months she turned into a real person to me, a sister I lost or left behind on the way; a shadow somewhere inside me, like the shadows of vanishing twins that show up on people's X-rays once in a blue moon. Even before she came back to find me I knew I owed her something, for being the one who lived. — Tana French

I remember the day when my seventh-grade teacher called my parents to tell them I'd been crying in the bathrooms at lunchtime after Sukey died - how disappointed Dad was that I was using Sukey's death as an excuse to get attention from my teachers; how delicately Mom suggested that Sukey would have wanted me to be happy; my humiliation at letting them down. — Hilary T. Smith

I think because my parents died in their early 50s, mid 50s, I always thought I would die young. And that's been both a useful thing and I suspect something that's haunted me a little bit. — Stephen Dunn

My father was the orphaned son of immigrants to the United States from Ireland. My father never knew his parents. His mother died - we're not sure - either at or shortly after his birth, and he and all of his siblings were placed in orphanages in the Boston area. — George J. Mitchell

People keep talking about this unfolding. I can't trust the unfolding, okay? If there is some higher power making origami out of the universe, it hates my guts. I was a fat kid whose parents got divorced, whose father died, and then who got cancer herself. So no. I don't trust how things are going to unfold. — Wendy Wunder

My parents hated me. All I ever heard was, "Why can't you be like your cousin Shelia? Why can't you be like your cousin Shelia?" Shelia had died at birth. — Joan Rivers

I didn't choose to be the Angel of Death, blast it!" He practically spat the words. When she blinked, taken aback by his vehemence, he added, "That was some fool's idea of a joke"
She kept staring at him, speechless. A joke? Her brother's death was a joke to someone?
Seeing her reaction, he went on in a low, tortured voice, "After Roger's accident, I wore black to mourn him. Since Roger wasn't my family, Chetwin commented on it, saying that I dressed in black because Death was my constant companion. He pointed out that everyone I touched died
my parents, my best friend ... everyone."
He began to pace the clearing, pain etched in his features. "Chetwin was right, of course. Death was my constant companion. So it was no great surprise when other people started calling me the Angel of Death." His voice grew choked. "I fit the part, after all."
-Gabriel to Virginia — Sabrina Jeffries

I talk to my kids about my mother's energy and how she would have loved them. I talk about how kind and polite my father was. So that they have some kind of remembrance that even though my parents died from their addictions and so that they know they were genuine in how they were. — Lemon Andersen

My parents were forever making lemonade. Neither responded to problems by drinking too much, taking anti-depressants, overeating, or suggesting they were victims. In fact, I can't recall a single day my parents slept in - the way many of us might when life throws a wrench in our plans. My parents were (are in the case of my mother - my father died in 2008) unfailingly resilient people, capable of waking up each day with a positive attitude, a new resolve to make things better. Part of this was due to their personalities, but it was also because of the generation in which they were raised. — Suzanne Venker

You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life — John Irving

In 1966, I bought my parents a carriage clock for their silver wedding anniversary. It was last wound 30 years later, in December 1996, the month my father died. — Clive Sinclair

He shrugged. "I'll take it if that's all I can get. I'll do the same. I'll start. My parents died when I was thirteen. I was left with an older cousin as a guardian. I detested him. He died a year and a half later, and it was one of the best days of my life. I disliked my next guardian, my Aunt Mildred, but she was a saint compared to the first one. — R.K. Lilley

See this? I wrote this piece two years ago, after my parents died. I was angry. I was hurt. I wrote down exactly what I was feeling. When I read it now, I don't share those same feelings. Do I regret writing it? No. Because there's a chance that someone in this very room may relate to this. It might mean something to them. — Colleen Hoover

My parents died a long time ago. And you know the sad thing? I still miss them every day. I spent my entire youth fighting with my dad over every little thing and damned if I wouldn't sell my soul to see him one more time and tell him I was sorry for the last words I said to him. Words I can never take back that should have never been said. So call your mom. No matter what kind of relationship you have with your parents, I swear to you, you'll miss them when they're gone. (Kyrian) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Mom and Dad were killed in a car accident on their way home from the tournament." Mr. Terupt's eyes were moist, but he kept going. "Fortunately, I was headed to college, which was the best place for me. Wrestling saved my life. The challenge it provided kept me going when I could have easily given up. I have no brothers or sisters, or any other extended family, so I was alone after my parents died. You saw that last year at the hospital. But now I have all of you. Sometimes answers come at unexpected times, in unexpected ways and unexpected places. I never — Rob Buyea

My dad died, I think, at 87. So I'll be lucky if I make 87. But in a lot of cases, the younger people live longer than their parents. And they know more. My dad used to tell me he ate the hog from his rooter to his tooter. So do I when I'm not trying to lose weight. — B.B. King

Both my parents died on the young side. My father was 45, and my mother was 61, so cancer's affected me in a big way. — Kevin Connolly

A word of warning here. The events as you remember them will never be the same in your memory once you have turned them into a memoir. For years I have worried that if I turn all of my life into literature, I won't have any real life left - just stories about it. And it is a realistic concern: it does happen like that. I am no longer sure I remember how it felt to be twenty and living in Spain after my parents died; my book about it stands now between me and my memories. When I try to think about that time, what comes to mind most readily is what I wrote. — Judith Barrington

My parents had told me that I would not really die, not the real me: that nobody really died, when they died; that my kitten and the opal miner had just taken new bodies and would be back again, soon enough. — Neil Gaiman