Quotes & Sayings About Not Knowing Your Family

I'm looking at the ruins of my own existence and knowing, with a sickening certainty, that my old home and my old life have been truly destroyed. — K.C. Finn

Central to knowing the Father is understanding the revealed pattern of family. The family is the most important unit in time and in eternity and is ordained of God. Living in loving family relationships not only brings us great happiness, but it also helps us learn correct principles and prepares us for eternal life. In addition, family relationships help us know, love, and understand the Father. This is one reason Latter-day Saints have always emphasized the importance of marriage and family both in the Church and in society. God's plan provides a way for family relationships to extend beyond the grave. We can return to the presence of God, eternally united with our families. — Quentin L. Cook

You called?" Sounding casual is difficult when it feels like you're heart's river-dancing in your rib cage.
"Yes. I just wondered where you were. You didn't answer your cell. Is everything okay?" She sighs, but I can't tell if it's in relief or parental aggravation.
"Everything's fine. My battery is dead, but Galen bought me a charger to keep over here, so it's charging."
"How sweet of him," she says, knowing good and well she instructed him to do so. "Well, just wanted to check in. Should I wait up for you? I don't appreciate you missing curfew the last few nights. Technically, staying over there until four in the morning is a coed sleepover, which I don't allow, or had you forgotten? Your trip to Florida with Galen's family was a special circumstance."
"I stayed the night at Chloe's all the time with JJ there." JJ is Chloe's eight-year-old brother. Not a great comeback, but it will have to do. — Anna Banks

But when you lose a family member or something tragic happens, that stays with you forever. You never get over it. Knowing that you have to deal with that for the rest of your life ... Football is important, but not as important as you once thought it was. — Brett Favre

...there was so much more to life than just money. There were family and friends, there was good, satisfying work, and knowing you had a place on this earth where you were loved and there was nothing to prove. — Natalie Baszile

I will not live to see you grow to womanhood, so I have written my story for you, my beloved grandchild, so that you can know the truth of what happened here so many years ago. I'm sure that in the course of your life you have wonderd about whispered conversations that stop when you are near. Wondered too about the knowing looks cast at you and your family. I am equally sure that your father has never found it in his heart to tell you the truth you are about to read. I beg you not to be angry with hime for withholding the truth from you. He has suffered greatly for my sins. — Susan Boles

Please don't tell your family that I'm here," he says softly. "I want to keep a low profile."
"Done," I say, knowing that the story of how I got caught peeping in his back window like a weirdo will be an easy secret to keep. — A.M. Robinson

The values and assumptions of that household I took in without knowing when or how it happened, and I have them to this day: The pleasure in sharing pleasure. The belief that is is only proper to help lame dogs to get over stiles and young men to put one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. An impatient disregard for small sums of money. The belief that it is a sin against Nature to put sugar in one's tea. The preference for being home over being anywhere else. The belief that generous impulses should be acted on, whether you can afford to do this or not. The trust in premonitions and the knowledge of what is in wrapped packages. The willingness to go to any amount of trouble to make yourself comfortable. The tendency to take refuge in absolutes. The belief that you don't have to apologize for tears; that consoling words should never be withheld; that what somebody wants very much they should, if possible, have. — William Maxwell

No one in my family wrote. And there was no real introduction. I suppose I somehow blundered into it when I was about six or seven years old. I was asked what present I would like, and, without knowing why, I responded that I would like a journal. It was a beautiful journal - so beautiful that I didn't want to sully it. — Imre Kertesz

It was mind boggling to know that I would experience such betrayal at such a young age while others live their whole life without knowing what betrayal is — Veronika Gasparyan

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 never thought I'd ever leave Zerc. But after knowing Cricket, it occurred to me that I had no reason to stay. I had no family, no friends aside from her. I never even spoke to Enkai until she brought us together. It was she who first inspired me to dream of actually seeing those worlds I spent my every waking moment reading about. Her and her wild heart, her laughing spirit, so bright in her eyes whenever she spoke of her travels and all the wondrous places she had seen. When I was a boy, I envied her for her adventures. When I became a man, I only pitied her. — Ash Gray

Being Southern isn't talking with an accent...or rocking on a porch while drinking sweet tea, or knowing how to tell a good story. It's how you're brought up -- with Southerners, family (blood kin or not) is sacred; you respect others and are polite nearly to a fault; you always know your place but are fierce about your beliefs. And food along with college football -- is darn near a religion. — Jan Norris

It's based not only on what it played like in the theater, but it's also knowing that certain things play differently in a home theater environment. You have different expectations when you're sitting with 700 people than when you're sitting with your friends or family. It's just a different world. — David Fincher

With murder, the victim is gone, and not forced to deal with what happened to her. The family must deal with it, but not the victim. But rape is much worse. The victim has a lifetime of coping, trying to understand, of asking questions, and the worst part, of knowing the rapist is still alive and may someday escape or be released. Every hour of every day, the victim thinks of the rape and asks herself a thousand questions. She relives it, step by step, minute by minute, and it hurts just as bad.
Perhaps the most horrible crime of all is the violent rape of a child. A woman who is raped has a pretty good idea why it happened. Some animal was filled with hatred, anger and violence. But a child? A ten-year-old child? Suppose you're a parent. Imagine yourself trying to explain to your child why she was raped. Imagine yourself trying to explain why she cannot bear children. — John Grisham

Even with all that - excellent treatment, wonderful family and friends, supportive work environment - I did not make my illness public until relatively late in life, and that's because the stigma against mental illness is so powerful that I didn't feel safe with people knowing. If you hear nothing else today, please hear this: There are not 'schizophrenics'. There are people with schizophrenia, and these people may be your spouse, they may be your child, they may be your neighbor, they may be your friend, they may be your coworker. — Elyn Saks

Knowing more about family history is the single biggest predictor of a child's emotional well-being. Grandparents can play a special role in this process, too. — Bruce Feiler

Most people never feel secure because they are always worried that they will lose their job, lose the money they already have, lose their spouse, lose their health, and so on. The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family. — Tony Robbins

I have learned that the kindness of a teacher, a coach, a policeman, a neighbor, the parent of a friend, is never wasted. These moments are likely to pass with neither the child nor the adult fully knowing the significance of the contribution. No ceremony attaches to the moment that a child sees his own worth reflected in the eyes of an encouraging adult. Though nothing apparent marks the occasion, inside that child a new view of self might take hold. He is not just a person deserving of neglect or violence, not just a person who is a burden to the sad adults in his life, not just a child who fails to solve his family's problems, who fails to rescue them from pain or madness or addiction or poverty or unhappiness. No, this child might be someone else, someone whose appearance before this one adult revealed specialness or lovability, or value. — Gavin De Becker

As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight. — Thomas Paine

But when I roamed New York City, knowing so much and capable of speaking so nicely, and yet so lonely, and often hungry and cold, I learned the joke at the core of American self-improvement: knowledge was so much junk to be processed one way or another at great universities. The real treasure the great universities offered was a lifelong membership in a respected artificial extended family. — Kurt Vonnegut

Even knowing that my presence brought a shadow over the lives of my loved ones, I can't regret the experiences I've had with them. They gave me life, becoming an integral part of my soul. They healed me when I was broken and somehow they recovered those parts of me, I thought lost forever. — J.D. Stroube

Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family. — Salman Rushdie

This is George, my beloved George. D'you think I want to go to my grave knowing that at the moment of his trial he looked around and saw no one lift a finger for him? If it is the death of me, I shall go to him."
"Go then," he said. "Kiss our baby good-bye before you go, and Henry. I shall tell Catherine that you left your blessing for her. And kiss me farewell. For if you go into that courtroom you will never come out alive. — Philippa Gregory

This is what I want. I want people to take care of me. I want them to force comfort upon me. I want the soft-pillow feeling that I associate with memories of being ill when I was younger, soft pillows and fresh linens and satin-edged blankets and hot chocolate. It's not so much the comfort itself as knowing there's someone who wants to take care of you. — Franny Billingsley

I do not have a family, per se. When I was younger, I grew up in foster care with my brother and sister. It was really a struggle, and knowing that there were people out there with tight-knit families really made my childhood an unfortunate one. — Victor Ortiz

Because orgasmic sex would lead to women's autonomy, knowing who you are and what we want: Women are not going to follow what some jackass tells us we must do. Not all women are going to get married, be monogamous and raise a family. It will destroy the current social structure based on a sexual double standard that we're currently living under. — Betty Dodson

We have indeed, felt the effects of the epic journey that has been our life. We have covered a lot of ground, parenting, marriage, career, family and otherwise, and at times, surely, have felt the worse for the wear, especially when different circumstances have chewed us up and spit us out! When it felt as if the kiln was stoked to maximum heat levels, and that we would shatter into a billion pieces that would never all be found! There are some differences now, having a little more seasoning to us. First of all, now we understand there is no such thing as being finished. There is always more firing, refining and glazing we can experience, and it is only a matter of when and how, not if we will do so. Secondly, we look forward to it, knowing now it would take more heat than possible to break us beyond repair. — Connie Kerbs

American? Indian? I don't know what these words mean. In Italy, it is all about blood, family, where you come from. I'm asked where I am from. I'm from nowhere; I always was, but now I am happy knowing it. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Prison is designed to separate, isolate, and alienate you from everyone and everything. You're not allowed to do so much as touch your spouse, your parents, your children. The system does everything within its power to sever any physical or emotional links you have to anyone in the outside world. They want your children to grow up without ever knowing you.They want your spouse to forget your face and start a new life. They want you to sit alone, grieving, in a concrete box, unable even to say your last farewell at a parent's funeral. — Damien Echols

There are two types of people on planet Earth, Batman and Iron Man. Batman has a secret identity, right? So Bruce Wayne has to walk around every second of every day knowing that if somebody finds out his secret, his family is dead, his friends are dead, everyone he loves gets tortured to death by costumed supervillains. And he has to live with the weight of that secret every day. But not Tony Stark, he's open about who he is. He tells the world he's Iron Man, he doesn't give a shit. He doesn't have that shadow hanging over him, he doesn't have to spend energy building up those walls of lies around himself. You're one or the other - either you're one of those people who has to hide your real self because it would ruin you if it came out, because of your secret fetishes or addictions or crimes, or you're not one of those people. And the two groups aren't even living in the same universe. — David Wong

This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work. — Mitch Albom

Developing mental strength isn't about having to be the best at everything. It also isn't about earning the most money or achieving the biggest accomplishments. Instead, developing mental strength means knowing that you'll be okay no matter what happens. Whether you're facing serious personal problems, a financial crisis, or a family tragedy, you'll be best prepared for whatever circumstances you encounter when you're mentally strong. Not only will you be ready to deal with the realities of life, but you'll be able to live according to your values no matter what life throws your way. When — Amy Morin

There was something about the people you grew up around, the ones you'd seen throughout your childhood, the folks you couldn't remember not knowing. Even if the past was a complicated mess, as you aged, you were just glad the sons of bitches were still on the planet.
It gave you the illusion that life wasn't as fragile as it actually was
and on occasion, that was the only thing that got you through the night. — J.R. Ward

L'Avventura,' Dad said, 'has the sort of ellipsis ending most American audiences would rather undergo a root canal than be left with, not only because they loathe anything left to the imagination-we're talking about the country that invented spandex-but also because they are a confident, self-assured nation. They know Family. They know Right from Wrong. They know God-many of them attest to daily chats with the man. And the idea that none of us can truly know anything at all-not the lives of our friends or family, not even ourselves-is a thought they'd rather be shot in the arm with their own semi-automatic rifle than face head-on. Personally, I think there's something terrific about not knowing, relinquishing man's feeble attempt to control. When you throw up your hands, say, "Who knows?" you can get on with the sheer gift of being alive. — Marisha Pessl

Your Letters concerning Miss N. have given me as much Concern as they ought-not knowing the Character nor what to advise, but feeling all a Fathers Tenderness, longing to be at home that I might enquire and consider and take the Care I ought. — John Adams

When I heard that heart disease kills more women than all cancers combined - when I heard that, I knew. The other thing that's very important is that heart disease ... is preventable. There are some specific lifestyle changes that women can make: losing weight, not smoking, exercising, eating healthy foods. Knowing the risk factors: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, [being] overweight. And if you have heart disease in your family, you should see your doctor. Because this disease is preventable. — Laura Bush

When your own thoughts are forbidden, when your questions are not allowed and our doubts are punished, when contacts with friendships outside of the organization are censored, we are being abused, for the ends never justify the means. When our heart aches knowing we have made friendships and secret attachments that will be forever forbidden if we leave, we are in danger. When we consider staying in a group because we cannot bear the loss, disappointment and sorrow our leaving will cause for ourselves and those we have come to love, we are in a cult ... If there is any lesson to be learned it is that an ideal can never be brought about by fear, abuse, and the threat of retribution. When family and friends are used as a weapon in order to force us to stay in an organization, something has gone terribly wrong. — Deborah Layton

Ben...hadn't known fear or despair or loss of control in his comfortable middle-class family. Bonnie could teach him a lot that was missing from his character. And he could give her a degree of stability and confidence. Knowing it was sentimental, Simmy nonetheless felt that this was a perfect match, which she would do well to safeguard to the best of her ability. Ben would teach Bonnie to tread more carefully and to think more logically. Each would help the other to grow up. — Rebecca Tope

There is, indeed, nothing more vexing than to be, for example, rich, of good family, of decent appearance, fairly well educated, not stupid, rather good-hearted even, and at the same time to possess no talent, no special quality, no eccentricity even, not a single idea of one's own, to be precisely "like everyone else."
One is rich, but not so rich as Rothschild; of a good family, but one which has never distinguished itself in any way; of decent appearance, but an appearance expressive of very little; well educated, but without knowing what to do with that education; one is intelligent, but without one's own ideas; one is good-hearted, but without greatness of soul, and so on and so forth. There are a great number of such people in the world, far more than it appears. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It's about that applause I want to speak to you. I want you to remember that when you've done a little dance or a song or sketch, the applause which you get is not only because you yourself have done your best, but because each of those men is seeing in you someone he loves at home, and because of you is able to forget for a little while the unhappiness of not being in his home, and in some cases the great tragedy of not knowing what has happened to the children in his family. — Noel Streatfeild

I get guilty when I spend money on silly things like clothes and stuff ... Having experienced a completely different extreme of wealth, and I don't mean me being poor or rich, I mean knowing that 40 quid that gets spent on a pair of shoes could go a long way for a family in Georgia for a week or even a month, having experienced that, you're a bit more [guilty]. — Katie Melua

These events are swirling around them. In the white community, people felt like they had no control over their neighborhoods, their destiny. In the black community, centuries of government and economic forces were pushing on them. I went in with a kind of arrogance, maybe, that came from living in a very intellectual family, and I left knowing that there was a lot about the way people lived that I didn't know about. — Sara Paretsky

As far as I am concerned, the greatest suffering is to feel alone, unwanted, unloved. The greatest suffering is also having no one, forgetting what an intimate, truly human relationship is, not knowing what it means to be loved, not having a family or friends. — Mother Teresa

I kind of love coming home and being with family and feeling comfortable and knowing where I come from; I kind of like it. — Michael Angarano

Ah, no, ah, no. There, senor, you would be wrong. Knowing that after the first year the rent is liable not to be paid, we bury the poorest two feet down. It is less work, you understand? of course, we must judge by the family who owns a body. — Ray Bradbury

Sisterhood was about shared experiences, trust, knowing you had people who would be there for you and would listen to you no matter what, and who could always tell if there was something wrong. They were the ones who, with a single look, knew if you were about to burst into giggles or into tears and why, and who knew when you needed to get out of the house for a midnight trip to In-N-Out Burger to gorge on a milkshake and animal-style fries. They were the ones you could be raging angry with one moment, and completely forgive ten minutes later. She would always be there for her sisters, and they would always be there for her, because they loved each other no matter what. — Michelle Madow

And when someone grows up knowing so little of what real love feels like, whether from family, or friends, or the love of a companion, that person starts to believe that they weren't meant to be loved, that good things will never happen to them. They start to believe that whenever something good does happen, it's inevitable that something bad will come along to replace it. — J.A. Redmerski

I know when people think of New York, they think of theater, restaurants, cultural landmarks and shopping," I told him. "But beyond the iconic skyline and the news from Wall Street, New York is a collection of villages. In our neighborhoods, we attend school, play Kick the Can, handball and ride our bikes. I grew up knowing the names and faces of the baker, the shoe repair family, the Knish man and the Good Humor man who sold me and the other kids in my neighborhood half a popsicle for a nickel. My father took me to the playground where he pushed me on the swing, helped balance me on the seesaw and watched as I hung upside down by my feet on the monkey bars. Yes," I told the interviewer, "people actually grow up in New York. — Gina Greenlee

His eyes widened. "Pain? Darling, you haven't yet experienced the pain I can inflict when I've been played for a fool. I'm in awe at your gall to try and fool me."
Bree went still as panic froze her. Oh, God. No.
"Ah, the light bulb finally goes off," he purred against her face; his voice low and
cold.
Even knowing who he was, and the family he came from, Bree could say that deep inside, she'd never felt any real fear of him.
She did now. He knew. The look on his face told her he knew that she had lied about him being her baby's father. Frantically, she grasped for any foothold she could find. "I don't know what you're talking-"
"DON'T!" he snapped, grabbing the sides of her face. — E. Jamie

I don't think he was knowable. I mean, when most people talk about knowing somebody a lot or a little, they're talking about the secrets they've been told or haven't been told. They're talking about intimate things, family things, love things," that nice old lady said to me. "Mr. Hoenikker had all those things in his life, the way every living person has to, but they weren't the main things with him. — Kurt Vonnegut

Sisters and brothers are the truest, purest forms of love, family and friendship, knowing when to hold you and when to challenge you, but always being a part of you. — Carol Ann Albright-Eastman

The line changed my life 'cause I thought of some poor woman I hadn't even met walking around the United States or the world not knowing she's going to be beaten up by me and these kids, unborn, not knowing they were going to be born into the family of a child-beater just because I was. So it really did have a great effect on me. — Terry Gross

Everybody makes mistakes. But that's the magic of family
knowing that underneath whatever you've said and done, you are still loved. And that you always will be, no matter what. — Bella Andre

Card five hundred and thirty-four," repeated Artemis. "Of a series of six hundred standard inkblot cards. I memorized them during our sessions. You don't even shuffle."
Argon checked the number on the back of the card: 534. Of course. "Knowing the number doesn't answer the question. What do you see?"
Artemis allowed his lip to wobble. "I see an ax dripping with blood. Also a scared child, and an elf clothed in the skin of a troll."
"Really?" Argon was interested now.
"No. Not really. I see a secure building, perhaps a family home, with four windows. A trustworthy pet, and a pathway leading from the door into the distance. I think, if you check your manual, you will find that these answers fall inside healthy parameters."
Argon did not need to check. The Mud Boy was right, as usual. — Eoin Colfer

The child is right," she announced firmly.
Arrietty's eyes grew big. "Oh, no-" she began. It shocked her to be right. Parents were right, not children. Children could say anything, Arrietty knew, and enjoy saying it-knowing always they were safe and wrong. — Mary Norton

Actors become actors because they loved entertaining their family by putting on the lampshade and dancing around as a kid, ... That's not my personality. For me, the fun part of making movies is seeing it as a director sees it. I like the architecture of movies. I like knowing what's coming and working to set that up. — Jodie Foster

Alex's experience of real family - of blood relations - was more like having a lot of people who had all wound up on the same mailing list without knowing quite why they signed up for it. — James S.A. Corey

The saddest thing is there won't be anyone to miss us when we're gone. No family, no friends, no one waiting at home."
"It's better that way," I said. "It'll be easier for me, knowing my death doesn't add to anyone's pain."
"If you can't give anyone pain, then you can't give them joy either. — Jennifer A. Nielsen

Maintaining connections with family and community across class boundaries demands more than just summary recall of where one's roots are, where one comes from. It requires knowing, naming, and being ever-mindful of those aspects of one's past that have enabled and do enable one's self-development in the present, that sustain and support, that enrich. One must also honestly confront barriers that do exist, aspects of that past that do diminish. — Bell Hooks

I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her to write a letter. She was my mother's mother. Your father's mother's mother's mother. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.
What kind of letter? my grandmother asked.
I told her to write whatever she wanted to write.
You want a letter from me? she asked.
I told her yes.
Oh, God bless you, she said.
The letter she gave me was sixty-seven pages long. It was the story of her life. She made my request into her own. Listen to me. — Jonathan Safran Foer

I am doing what I am supposed to be doing right now. I smile knowing that I have the most wonderful husband, family, and friends. I work with friends whom I can learn from and whom I respect and who respect me. — Daphne Oz

Losing a family member, and her dying knowing she didn't have to die, that ... is a scar that will last forever for the people remaining, and even with good actions and good words, that scar will never disappear. Ever. — Kim Du-han

My family is like a sanctuary to me. I always turn to them for support and strength. I take comfort in knowing no matter which path I choose, my family stands behind me. — Benjamin Bratt

He says nothing. Not because he disagrees, or disapproves, but because he's crying. Faintly I hear my father sniffling and wiping away tears, and I know he's proud, just incapable of expressing it. I can't fault the man for not knowing how to say what's in his heart. It's the family curse. — Andre Agassi

Making a family work was about love and trust and knowing where to draw the lines. — Susan Mallery

Being with my family and loved ones makes me feel vulnerable. Speaking my truth and then being that in action. Leaving my comfort zone but knowing that risk is going to create something beautiful. I believe I have come to good terms with my vulnerability. I welcome it now, where I didn't in the past. — Dash Mihok

There's something about you,
Your eyes speak a story in a language only known to my soul. The kind of communication we as humans dream about, the one that reaches into the core of who you are and loves you for it.
It doesn't appear often or by accident & when it happens you just know " There's something about you ". — Nikki Rowe