Our New Family Quotes & Sayings

For the first time in ten years, the March family gathered to perform the Twelfth Night Revels for the village of Blessingstoke, just as they had done in Master Shakespeare's day. The dragon breathed fire while the Turkish Knight brandished his sword at St. George, and when it was finished, the resurrected saint and his sad dragon stood in tableau while the white-robed chorus, of which Portia and I made two, sang of the blood-berried holly and the sweetly clinging ivy. Rather like Brisbane and myself, I thought fancifully. Both evergreen and hardy, one sturdy, one tenacious, and forever undivided. But now there was a new little branch grafted to our union. — Deanna Raybourn

Though I work in New York City, in an office about a mile from the World Trade Center, I was not in New York City when the planes struck. I was on a plane above the Atlantic Ocean, heading back to New York from a family reunion and celebration in Europe. I had said good-bye to my husband in London; he was staying for a wedding of a business friend. I couldn't wait to see my kids and my parents, who would be waiting for me at a Little League game in our town, about thirty-five miles from New York City. An hour and a half into the flight, I suddenly had the feeling that the plane was making a slow turn. Nobody else seemed to notice. I sat nervously, hoping I was imagining it. But then a stewardess made an announcement. "There has been a catastrophic event affecting all of North American airspace," she said. "We are returning — Lauren Tarshis

Whatever the new movie about Apple founder Steve Jobs unearths, one thing is doubtless: we will switch our Apple computers right back on (maybe to talk about it, maybe not) right after we see the film. Could anything short of one genuine civic conscience, related in all sincerity stop us from miring ourselves in pirouettes of unreality, counting stickers on blue and white virtual flypaper as dearer in our imaginations than anyone in our daily lives, perhaps even our own family members? — John Thomas Allen

Christians can no longer refer to 'our troops' or 'our history' because of their new identity. Fabricated boundaries and walls are removed for the Christian. One's neighbor is not only from Chicago but also from Baghdad. One's brother or sister in the church could be from Iran or California
no difference! Our family is transnational and borderless; we are in Iraq, and we are in Palestine. And if we are indeed to become born again, we will have to begin talking like it, changing the meaning of we, us, my, and our. — Shane Claiborne

These neighborhood was our first home as a community but, once Italians began to gain status as "full" Americans, they moved out of the communities that they co-habited with other immigrants and people of color. The rootedness in this community shifted into a dissention of difference and of privilege. In order for Italian-Americans to mark their new social location under assumed "Whiteness," they had to make a physical move away from the marginal communities of color. The discussion ended in my favor but would mark the beginning of a long struggle of unpacking the internalized oppression and discrimination that marked my family's identity of "White"-working class-Italian-Americans learning to assimilate while keeping their hyphenated identity. Learning to build bridges between my different borders and my passions has been a continual process for me. — Lachrista Greco

When I was growing up in New York, we were the anomaly. Our family stayed, but back then families didn't stay. Once you had a second kid, you immediately left, so the kids could run around outside. — Mike D

When you have kids it's nice to have a place where they can always return to and some place where they will grow up in, but I never had that. I'm not attached to things and places. I like that we [the family] keep moving. It's a nomadic life, and I think that's a great life. I'm excited when we take our kids to a new country and they don't just immediately look for the comforts of home. They blend into that country. Send them to any place in the world and they won't be scared. They'll just feel like they can make friends there. — Angelina Jolie

Shame fills me at revealing this new family secret. One that can be added to the skeletons already spilling into our lives. — Sejal Badani

Having a thirteen-year-old in the family is like having a general-admission ticket to the movies, radio and TV. You get to understand that the glittering new arts of our civilization are directed to the teen-agers, and by their suffrage they stand or fall. — Max Lerner

After sketching his program for the scientific revolution that he foresaw, Bacon ends his account with a prayer: "Humbly we pray that this mind may be steadfast in us, and that through these our hands, and the hands of others to whom thou shalt give the same spirit, thou wilt vouchsafe to endow the human family with new mercies". That is still a good prayer for all of us as we begin the twenty-first century. — Freeman Dyson

The gospel doesn't erase our past, but it drastically changes our future with a living hope. The gospel gives us the opportunity to be healed and to know God as our Abba Father. With our adoption into God's family comes a radically new life. — Johnny Carr

There's something profoundly intense and intoxicating about friendship found en route. It's the bond that arises from being thrust into uncomfortable circumstances, and the vulnerability of trusting others to navigate those situations. It's the exhilaration of meeting someone when we are our most alive selves, breathing new air, high on life-altering moments. It's the discovery of the commonality of the world's people and the attendant rejection of prejudices. It's the humbling experience of being suspicious of a stranger who then extends a great kindness. It's the astonishment of learning from those we set out to teach. It's the intimacy of sharing small spaces, the recognition of a kindred spirit across the globe.
It's the travel relationship, and it can only call itself family. — Lavinia Spalding

Lordy, lordy, lordy do I love money. It is a character flaw, no doubt, one that springs from a panicked childhood in which I always felt as if our family was only a couple missed child support payments from being tossed onto the pitiless streets of our suburban New Jersey town. — Michael Ian Black

In our family "whim-wham" is code, a defanged reference to any number of moods and psychological disorders, be they depressive, manic, or schizoaffective. Back in the 1970s and '80s - when they were all straight depression - we called them "dark nights of the soul." St. John of the Cross's phrase ennobled our sickness, spiritualized it. We cut God out of it after the manic breaks started in 1986, the year my dad, brother, and I were all committed. Call it manic depression or by its new, polite name, bipolr disorder. Whichever you wish. We stick to our folklore and call it the whim-whams. — David Lovelace

Most relationships are a blend of online and off-line interaction. Courtships take place via text. Political debates are sparked and social movements mobilize on websites. Why not focus on the positive - a celebration of these new exchanges? Because these are the stories we tell each other to explain why our technologies are proof of progress. We like to hear these positive stories because they do not discourage us in our pursuit of the new - our new comforts, our new distractions, our new forms of commerce. And we like to hear them because if these are the only stories that matter, then we don't have to attend to other feelings that persist - that we are somehow more lonely than before, that our children are less empathic than they should be for their age, and that it seems nearly impossible to have an uninterrupted conversation at a family dinner. We — Sherry Turkle

Each time we go through a major life change (getting married or divorced, moving, having a family, switching careers, starting a new business, going back to school), we experience a breakdown of our organizational systems. It's inevitable-we are dealing with a new set of realities-and it takes time to process the information and to actually see what there is to organize. — Julie Morgenstern

Dear Lord," began Randy, who paused for long enough that Tristan sneaked an eye open to look at him. His saw his mother's cheek twitch with what he thought might be apprehension. "We are so grateful to be gathered here today with our family, and the family of our brother's homosexual boyfriend, and our new little goth friend who has a gay dad, whatever the heck that is all about. We'd like to say we're grateful this year for condoms, lube, and Ellen Degeneres, and for those guys on Queer Eye ... "
Randall Evan Phillips!" his mother shouted. — Z.A. Maxfield

So many of us had to leave. But every single one of us wishes we hadn't had to. Every single one of us wishes our family had acted like our family, that even when we found a new family, we hadn't had to leave the other one behind. Every single one of us would have loved to have been loved unconditionally by our parents. Don't make him leave you, we want to tell Mrs. Kim. He doesn't want to leave you. — David Levithan

New Labour needs to realise that family life and the way we raise our children are private matters. — Charles Kennedy

Wrong' is why we have this office. 'Wrong' is why we both have the bank accounts we do. 'Wrong' is what our readers, our viewers, our subscribers ... what the public wants to see. 'Wrong' is why you and I are rich.

For the next two or three weeks, until you turn in that winning ticket, I will be the one person in the world you will need to trust. I will be the architect of the new life the two of you are about to embark on. I know your best case scenarios and a whole lot of the worst case scenarios you might run into.

Any publicity for you is publicity for us too. You might not understand it, but as far as the world is concerned, Celebrity Bounty owns you and your family. — Michael Vraa

With the rise of Technopoly, one of those thought-worlds disappears. Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself in precisely the way Aldous Huxley outlined in Brave New World. It does not make them illegal. It does not make them immoral. It does not even make them unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant. And it does so by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by family, by politics, by history, by truth, by privacy, by intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements. Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy. — Neil Postman

A few months after our friendly chat about kids (and my condescending remarks about New York), Mrs. Palin told conservative filmmaker John Ziegler that Katie Couric and I had exploited and profited by her family. But I know better than to respond to attacks in the media. Although if I were to respond, I would probably just sau, Nice reality show. — Tina Fey

'Slow West' is a film that I did with Michael Fassbender in New Zealand and Scotland. The director was John McLean. It's a film set in the 1800s. I play a young Scottish boy brought up in the royal family. I fall in love with someone who works on our land. — Kodi Smit-McPhee

But even though our old home had physically seen better days, I knew in that moment that we had taken the soul of that house with us to our new home. And as I branched out and left our small town, I'd taken all the best bits of home life - the essence of its soul - with me wherever I went. It's the soul that matters most, after all. And even though over the years I've lived in everything from a cramped dorm room at school to a grand apartment in Paris and finally to our family town home in Santa Monica, I have taken the soul of home with me, wherever I am. — Jennifer L. Scott

Of course, our roles within the family are radically different. Generational stereotypes of moms and dads have disintegrated A-bomb style. We are making it up as we go along, pioneering a new era of equality. — Gudjon Bergmann

My family raised me in update New York with the core message: Be whoever you are. That person may (or may not be) extraordinary. We're not going to lie to make you feel better, but we'll love you no matter what. In our house, it wasn't "You are special." It was more like "You don't seem that special so far, but we don't care. — Megyn Kelly

I had ancestors who were slave-holders, which is a difficult piece of family history to say the least. In a recent New York Times article on the subject of modern attitudes toward our slave-holding past, the writer noted that we all want to be from "innocent origins." I _know_ I'm not. Then again, I suspect most of us are not. — Laura Lippman

We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become. — Lauren DeStefano

It seems to me that the novel is very much alive as a form. Without any question, every epoch has its own forms, and the novel nowadays cannot resemble that of the nineteenth century. In this domain all experiments are justified, and it is better to write something new clumsily than to repeat the old brilliantly. In the nineteenth century, novels dealt with the fate of a person or of a family; this was linked to life in that period. In our time the destinies of people are interwoven. Whether man recognizes it or not, his fate is much more linked to that of many other people than it used to be. — Ilya Ehrenburg

She also said her mother was a bitch, but we couldn't choose our birth family. We did have the power to build a new and better one though. — Bijou Hunter

We must pass along the good word that the one thing America needs above every other thing on earth is HOMES AND HEARTS BIG ENOUGH FOR CHILDREN, as were the homes of our grandfathers, when no joy in life equaled the joy of a new child in the family, and if you didn't have a dozen you weren't doing your manifest duty." "Well, — Gene Stratton-Porter

Every job is important because each one represents an American's livelihood and ability to raise a family. Yet spending our time building walls around America will do nothing to help us compete for the millions of new jobs being created. — Carly Fiorina

To be conservative in politics is to take one's bearings not from the latest bright idea about how to make a better world, but by looking carefully at what the past reveals both about the kind of people we are and the problems that concern us. As we get older, we often become conservative in our habits, in our family practices, and in our recognition of the richness of our civilization, but this evolution of our character into a set of habits in no way blocks adventurousness. The old no less than the young may be found starting new enterprises, sailing around the world, and solving arcane academic questions. But it is in the ordinary business of life that we find our excitement, not in foolish collective dreams of political perfection. — Kenneth Minogue

Cultivating loving kindness for ourselves is the foundation of real love for our friends and family, for new people we encounter in our daily lives, for all beings and for life itself. — Sharon Salzberg

The cool thing is, when we first did our joint Ring Of Honour-New Japanies Wrestlers, I think that definitely existed. I think the ROH guys were like, "we can't let these New Japan guys outshine us" the new japan guys were ready to make a statement as it was this really big event in America. But the cool thing about this relationship is we've literally become a family now. A lot of us are friends with each. We obviously respect each other. — Adam Cole

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

St. Augustine says something which is a great thought and a great comfort here. He interprets the passage from the Psalms 'seek his face always' as saying: this applies 'for ever'; to all eternity. God is so great that we never finish our searching. He is always new. With God there is perpetual, unending encounter, with new discoveries and new joy. Such things are theological matters. At the same time, in an entirely human perspective, I look forward to being reunited with my parents, my siblings, my friends, and I imagine it will be as lovely as it was at our family home. — Pope Benedict XVI

The idea that each individual has intrinsic, God-given value and is of infinite worth quite apart from any social contribution - an idea most pagans would have rejected as absurd - persists today as the ethical basis of western law and politics. Our secularized western idea of democratic society owes much to that early Christian vision of a new society - a society no longer formed by the natural bonds of family, tribe, or nation but by the voluntary choice of its members. — Elaine Pagels

The resource of generational history is accorded little attention our society, which seems ever more obsessed with making "new" and "better" synonymous. From my family I became aware of the importance of passing along wisdom from one generation to the next. Yet despite the increasing proliferation of digital recording and other communication technologies, we're passing on less knowledge today than our parents did through the oral tradition alone. We're drowning in photographs and videos, capturing every mundane moment of our birthdays, holidays, and vacations. Yet these can be no more than pleasant distraction, only scratching the surface of our real relationships. — Ralph Nader

this one is a matter of personal testimony; I could put together a whole volume of tales I've been told along the lines of "I used to be an atheist, and I was [strung out on drugs] [cruel to my family] [divorcing my wife] [etc.], but then I found Jesus and became a new man of high character and deep happiness, therefore Jesus was real." The entire churchgoing people of America must once have been raving angry atheist hedonists in broken relationships - which suggests that at an earlier time in our civic life, the parties were much more fun and the libertines far more common. Unfortunately, I've never been able to identify this magical period in recent history, even though I've lived through a few generations now. Yet all the Christians today seem to be citing this mythical past of ubiquitous godlessness. I really regret that I missed it all. Having — P.Z. Myers

Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of our age is the subsiding of all other concerns to the predominance of politics. And thus, we have succumbed to a Lyndon Johnson-like dependence upon the power of the state.

The tragic result has been that all of life has been politicized, and if the new social engineers have their way, politics will increase in power - especially in its power to penetrate into our everyday lives and rule our destinies. For in fact politics has become, for many of the political elite, a kind of state religion. — George Grant

Hello, Harry, dear. I suppose you've heard our exciting news?" She pointed to the brand-new silver badge on Percy's chest. "Second Head Boy in the family!" she said, swelling with pride. "And last," Fred muttered under his breath. "I don't doubt that," said Mrs. Weasley, frowning suddenly. "I notice they haven't made you two prefects." "What do we want to be prefects for?" said George, looking revolted at the very idea. "It'd take all the fun out of life." Ginny giggled. "You want to set a better example for your sister!" snapped Mrs. Weasley. — J.K. Rowling

In the beloved community of 'Our Father,' the same desperate love that a mother has for her baby or that a child has for his or her daddy is extended to all our human family. Biological love is too small a vision. Nationalism is far too myopic. A love for our own relatives or the people of our own country is not a bad things. But our love does not stop at the border. We now have a family that includes by transcends biology and geography. We have family in Iraq, Peru, Afghanistan and Sudan. We have family members who are starving and homeless, dying of AIDS and living in the midst of war. This is the new family of our Father. — Shane Claiborne

What's been building since the 1980's is a new kind of social Darwinism that blames poverty and crime and the crisis of our youth on a breakdown of the family. That's what will last after this flurry on family values. — Stephanie Coontz

The trombone and side-drums in the chamber music of Stravinsky will do well enough in a very smart house-party where all the conversation is carried on in an esoteric family slang and the guests are expected to enjoy booby-traps. Very different is the outlook of some of our younger masters such as Hindemith, Jarnach, and others, whose renunciation of beauty was in itself a youthfully romantic gesture, and was accompanied by endless pains in securing adequate performance. The work of masterly performers can indeed alone save the new ideas from being swamped in a universal dullness which no external smartness can long distinguish from that commemorated in the Dunciad. — Donald Francis Tovey

The United States is a conceited nation with shallow roots, and what happened before living memory doesn't seem to interest most people I know at home. We like living in our houses with our new furniture, on our new streets in new neighborhoods. Everything is disposable and everything is replaceable. Personal family history can feel simply irrelevant in our new world, beyond the simplest national identifications, and even those who can get sort of vague for people. I remember a boy in high school who told the history teacher he was 'half Italian, half Polish, half English, half German, and one-quarter Swedish.' I think one of the reasons so many of us are disconnected from our histories is because none of it happened where we live in the present; the past, for so many, is a faraway place across an ocean. — Katharine Weber

It is an honor to open in New York City and to have the opportunity to serve and share our family's version of American Chinese food and hospitality. New York City deeply influenced my passion for food and service, and it feels good to be back. — Andrew Cherng

In this new century, our commitment to family and to faith, to community and opportunity, to freedom and to hope, will be the light that shines to lead us forward. — Bill Owens

Every summer my husband and I pack our suitcases, load our kids into the car, and drive from tense, crowded New York City to my family's cottage in Maine. It's on an island, with stretches of sea and sandy beaches, rocky coasts, and pine trees. We barbecue, swim, lie around, and try to do nothing. — Hope Davis

Our sense of self, formulated in large part by the untold number of cross-related connections that we make with our physical, social, and family environments, is reliant upon fitting into our social fabric. The educational environment, family relationships, peer groups, books, television, films, music, along with an assortment of other cultural events shape our emergent persona. Our successes and failures interacting in the world leave their collective imprint upon the wet clay of our forming brains. We are sentimental creatures who cling to past memories. We are inquisitive critters who venture forth from our protective dens to explore new territory. We are perceptive organisms equipped with five basic senses. We are sentient beings who can consciously organize our sense impressions into guiding ideas and useful principles. Our survival responses form a central cord of our emotions. We are receptive, compassionate beings that respond with both body and mind to global stimuli. — Kilroy J. Oldster

In April 2002, I saw the Bush family once again during a JJRTC tour similar to the one we had conducted for the Clintons. It was strange to see George W. Bush grown up and president. It took me back to when I first arrived at the White House - a rookie being cued in by old hats. I hoped President Bush could bring back what was so sorely missed and what once existed under his father. Dynasties made me nervous, but I sorely hoped Bush 43 (our forty-third president) would restore the White House to the level of dignity that Papa Bush had promoted. I thought of my own father, the life I led, and what my son might be like. Was I as strong as my father? Had I kept my promise to protect others? Would my children retain their character? I was honored that the new president remembered me and shook my hand, just as his father would have. I asked about Bush 41 (our forty-first president). It was blast. — Gary J. Byrne

Our parts now
which perforce we must play
are not father and daughter, but one old Abhorsen, making way for the new. But behind this, there is always my love. — Garth Nix

In Jump Time's developing hybrid world, capacities once nurtured in separate societies are available to the entire family of humankind. This is a stupendous happening, as important as the discovery of new continents during the time of the great sea journeys. For the first time in human history the genius of the human race is available for all to harvest. These rediscovered capacities may be evolutionary accelerators, now being gathered from many places, times, and cultures to awaken our species to who we are and what we yet may be and do. Often, however, it is not comfortable. We can for a time find ourselves strangers in a very strange land, wishing we could return to the comforts of a more insular and familiar worldview. Yet when we get beyond the shutterings of our local cultural trance, we gain the courage to nurture the emerging forms of the possible human and the possible society. — Jean Houston

The word Familia did not originally signify the ideal of our modern philistine, which is a compound of sentimentality and domestic discord. Among the Romans, in the beginning, it did not even refer to the married couple and their children, but to the slaves alone. Famulus means a household slave and familia signifies the totality of slaves belonging to one individual. The expression was invented by the romans to describe a new social organism, the head of which had under him wife and children and a number of slaves, under Roman paternal power, with power of life and death over them all. — Friedrich Engels

Moving is a well-established tradition in America, and _moving up_ constitutes a significant part of the American dream. Not only is working one's way to a bigger house central to our ethos but it makes sense functionally as families bring more children into the world. But why must the move to a larger or more luxurious house bring with it the abandonment of one's neighbors, community groups, and often even schoolmates? The suburban pod system causes people to move not just from house to house but form community to community. Only in a traditionally organized neighborhood of varied incomes can a family significantly alter its housing without going very far. In the new suburbs, you can't move up without moving out. (The same is true of moving down. Seniors seeking a smaller house are often forced to abandon their familiar community and start over someplace else.) — Andres Duany

My parents were lured to America by the democracy here promised. In our family, freedom was a word to conjure by. Hoping for larger privileges for the growing family of children, they brought them to the New World, the world of many intellectual as well as material advantages. — Jenkin Lloyd Jones

So many of us had to make our own families. So many of us had to pretend when we were home. So many of us had to leave. But every single one of us wishes we hadn't had to. Every single one of us wishes our family had acted like our family, that even when we found a new family, we hadn't had to leave the other one behind. Every single one of us would have loved to have been loved unconditionally by our parents. — David Levithan

My bookstore obsession grew to the point where I'd search for new shops during family trips, as though that were the reason for our travel. — Lewis Buzbee

But what does it mean to be on God's side? I believe it starts with focusing on the common good - not just in politics, but in all the decisions we make in our personal, family, vocational, financial, communal, and, public lives. That old but always new ethic simply says we must care for more than just ourselves or our own group. We must care for our neighbor as well, and for the health of the life we share with one another. It echoes a very basic tenet of Christianity and other faiths - love your neighbor as yourself - still the most transformational ethic in history. — Jim Wallis

We've seen how beautiful it can be to follow Jesus into this new way of being human. But one of the things I love most about Jesus is how much He loves humanity in its brokenness. If He was surrounded by fractured people then, why would we expect it to be any different now? I actually think it is a larger mistake when we Christians attempt to pretend that our lives are more together than they really are in order to "manage our image" before the broader culture. Come look at our perfect church and our perfect family. And if you join us, maybe one day you, too, can have a perfect life! That kind of spin is a breeding ground for disappointment. — Jonathan Martin

Everybody in my family had a real sick, twisted sense of humor. Most of the jokes we make in our house, we would just never even dream of making anywhere else. Just sick, horrible stuff. That wasn't anything new to college. — Seth MacFarlane

I saw our future together compressed into a moment; our faces changing, desire having to cope and reinvent itself at each new stratum of familiarity; I saw the gradual dissolution of mutual mystery and romance, its succession by friendship and a sort of tranquil and supernatural loyalty; I felt - with great lightness of being - the bearability of the idea of death, if the life preceding it was bloodily commingled (in children) with hers. A humble little truth: build a truly good life and it will reward you with mastery of the fear of death. It was simple. Having committed to the building of a marriage and family, all sorts of truths came forward and offered themselves. — Glen Duncan

There is nothing new about these Republican attacks on our family planning decisions. In fact, from the moment they came into power, Republicans in the House of Representatives have been waging a war on women's health. — Patty Murray

Losing this part of my life, this time of being a mother to growing children, is indeed an ending. For months, I've carried that quiet sorrow, getting used to its heaviness, the way one learns to live with the chronic soreness of a joint, a tenderness in wrist or knee. What I long to do now is to let the sadness go as well, to have faith that even as my sons graduate from high school and leave home, and this phase of our family life draws to a close, there will be new beginnings not just for them, but for all of us. — Katrina Kenison

Banning human cloning reflects our humanity. It is the right thing to do. Creating a child through this new method calls into question our most fundamental beliefs. It has the potential to threaten the sacred family bonds at the very core of our ideals and our society. At its worst, it could lead to misguided and malevolent attempts to select certain traits, even to create certain kind of children
to make our children objects rather than cherished individuals. — William J. Clinton

There are many forms of poverty: economic poverty, physical poverty, emotional poverty, mental poverty, and spiritual poverty. As long as we relate primarily to each other's wealth, health, stability, intelligence, and soul strength, we cannot develop true community. Community is not a talent show in which we dazzle the world with our combined gifts. Community is the place where our poverty is acknowledged and accepted, not as something we have to learn to cope with as best as we can but as a true source of new life.
Living community in whatever form - family, parish, twelve-step program, or intentional community - challenges us to come together at the place of our poverty, believing that there we can reveal our richness. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Don't put down too many roots in terms of a domicile. I have lived in four countries and I think my life as a writer and our family's life have been enriched by this. I think a writer has to experience new environments. There is that adage: No man can really succeed if he doesn't move away from where he was born. I believe it is particularly true for the writer. — Arthur Hailey

Falling into this elaborate daydream about me and Heather Craven forever after. Imagining us as married professionals with our six towheaded children running loose in our suburbanite home as surrounded by a lush yard and fenced. Walking toward the door yelling, "Honey, I'm home!" and having Heather answer my call. Imagining the family dog jumping me, slobbering over in greeting and my laughing heartily as I was knocked to the ground. At one point getting so steeped in the fantasy that I actually found myself troubleshooting marital problems in advance, arguing with the fantasy love of my life before the dog grew on me over whether we should even have a dog; wasn't six dependents enough? Losing the argument and then reluctantly accepting this new intrusion and competitor for Heather's affections. — Tommy Walker

I am an Egyptian Muslim, educated in Cairo and New York, and now living in Vienna. My wife and I have spent half our lives in the North, half in the South. And we have experienced first hand the unique nature of the human family and the common values we all share. — Mohamed ElBaradei

When a child becomes an adult ... the elders are fearful. And for good reason ... not we but they are the germinators of future generations. Will they leave us behind as we did our parents? Consign us to neatly paved retirement villages? Trample us in the dust as they go flying out to their new galaxies? We had better tie them down, flagellate them, isolate them in the family cocoon, ... indoctrinate them into the tribal laws and make sure they kneel before the power of the elders. — Louise J. Kaplan

Once we got back to the office, our graphic artist made a poster of our core values. We believed we had the power to make one another's professional dreams come true. We believed the work we did affected more than just our clients, but each other. We believed in grace over guilt and we believed anybody could become great if they were challenged within the context of a community. Suddenly we were more than a company, we were a new and better culture. Our business had become a fund-raising front for a makeshift family. — Donald Miller

I especially remember that on All Souls Day, when so many people wanted new monuments for the graves, our whole family pitched in. I did the lettering on the stones, my brother did the carving, and my sisters put the finishing touches on them, the gold leaf and all that. — Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

Hillary Clinton, our junior senator from New York, announced that she has no intentions of ever, ever running for office of the President of the United States. Her husband, Bill Clinton, is bitterly disappointed. He is crushed. There go his dreams of becoming a two-impeachment family. — David Letterman

Eyuran," I addressed his Node. "What was in this one?"

He came closer and studied the huge case, which was easily twice the height of an adult Danna and had body slots for some kind of gear.

"I don't know for sure. I haven't seen this before. It resembles a gearbot sarx, but those are usually larger. Must be a new, compact model." Observing the empty sarx, a wave of bad feelings came over me.

"I also saw some of the weapon crates with broken locks."

"If someone is operating a gearbot, a bunch of guns will be the least of our worries. A hull repairer can't even begin to compete with the power of an assault exomachine." He looked around and frowned. "By the way, the whole hull repairer rack is empty. Counting the one you took out, we should have seven more roaming somewhere on the ship. — Jeno Marz

Although my road to writing seems like it may have come easily, there were a few bumps in that road. I didn't get a lot of encouragement from friends, although my family were great supporters. I also had many ... what you would call "mind-boggling" moments, when I would doubt myself and what I was writing. It has been said that we, ourselves, are our own worst critics.
All the hard work had payed off though, and I created a children's book that I am proud of, and an unforgettable little girl that will touch the hearts of many."-Nina Jean Slack — Nina Jean Slack

None of our family businesses were focused on technology. It was '93 when I came out of law school, and the Internet was taking hold. So I started New World Ventures. — J. B. Pritzker

So often when God places a call on one of His children, the ability to answer the call requires a separation between the old life and the new life. We are called away from the old in order to prepare our heart for what is to come. This can be a painful and difficult separation. Joseph was separated from his family. Jacob was sent to live with his uncle Laban. Moses was sent to the desert. Perhaps God has placed you in your own desert period. Perhaps you cannot make sense of the situation in which you find yourself. If you, like Paul, will get intimate with God during this time, He will reveal the purposes He has for you. The key is pressing into Him. Seek Him with a whole heart, and He will be found. — Os Hillman

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

Perhaps the best antidote and preventive for burnout is the feeling of solid connection with the people in our lives. When we can share our frustrations with family and friends, our burden is eased and we can get new perspectives. — Richard O'Connor

Years passed. The trees in our yard grew taller. I watched my family and my friends and neighbors, the teachers whom I'd had or imaged having, the high school I had dreamed about. As I sat in the gazebo I would pretend instead that I was sitting on the topmost branch of the maple under which my brother had swallowed a stick and still played hide-and-seek with Nate, or I would perch on the railing of a stairwell in New York and wait for Ruth to pass near. I would study with Ray. Drive the Pacific Coast Highway on a warm afternoon of salty air with my mother. But I would end each day with my father in his den.
I would lay these photographs down in my mind, those gathered from my constant watching, and I could trace how one thing- my death- connected these images to a single source. No one could have predicted how my loss would change small moments on Earth. But I held on to those moments, hoarded them. None of them were lost as long as I was there. — Alice Sebold

No one in my family had ever attended school [ ... ] On the first day of school my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why this particular name I have no idea. — Nelson Mandela

My family was made of good people who did good things with what they were given. What fairness does life show in a time like this? But life is not fair and that is nothing new, so I bottled the pain and loss, and released them through a single tear rolling down my cheek. — B.M. Tolbert

It had happened to me once, long ago. I had been named Osbert by my father, who was called Uhtred, but when my elder brother, also Uhtred, was slaughtered by the Danes my father had renamed me. It is always thus in our family. The eldest son carries on the name. My stepmother, a foolish woman, even had me baptized a second time because, she said, the angels who guard the gates of heaven would not know me by my new name, and so I was dipped in the water barrel, but Christianity washed off me, thank Christ, and I discovered the old gods and have worshiped them ever since. — Bernard Cornwell

My father sits at the head of a table before the carcass of an enormous American turkey. What he is ashamed of is the one act of decency I have yet encountered in all the tales of our family's past. A young boy with a dead father and a dead friend bends down before a country dog and feeds it his butter sandwich. And I know that sandwich. Because he has made it for me. Two slices of that dark, unbleached Russian bread, the kind that tastes of badly managed soil and a peasant's indifference to death. On top of it, the creamiest, deadliest of American butter, slathered in thick feta-like hunks. And on top of that cloves of garlic, the garlic that is to give me strength, that is to clear my lungs of asthmatic gunk, and make of me a real garlic-eating strong man. At a table in Leningrad, and a table in deepest Queens, New York, the ridiculous garlic crunches beneath our teeth as we sit across from each other, the garlic obliterating whatever else we have eaten, and making us one. — Gary Shteyngart

The family is changing, not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors. — Mary Catherine Bateson

If I had a magic wand, I would live in a building in New York, big enough so my friends, my family could all have apartments in it. We'd raise our kids in the same space and have backyard barbecues and get old and fat together. — Liz Murray

I loved my job at the paper. I loved meeting new people every day and never knowing where I would end up. But somehow, the ever-shifting schedules of a police officer and a reporter did not equal 'family friendly.' One of us needed to take a normal job for the sake of our young daughter. — Molly Harper

The strategy we need to pursue is one of recovering our time - to push back on our hours of work. We need to form a new alliance between feminist groups, labor unions, child advocates, progressive corporations, and the federal government insofar as it's willing to pursue a family-friendly agenda. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

We have reached a new milestone as a human family. With seven billion of us now inhabiting our planet, it is time to ask some fundamental questions. How can we provide a dignified life for ourselves and future generations while preserving and protecting the global commons - the atmosphere, the oceans and the ecosystems that support us? — Ban Ki-moon

This is not the time for political fun and games. This is the time for a new beginning. I ask you now to put aside any feelings of frustration or helplessness about our political institutions and join me in this dramatic but responsible plan to reduce the enormous burden of Federal taxation on you and your family. — Ronald Reagan

America today is a "save yourself" society if there ever was one. But does it really work? The underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, typhus, etc. Affluent America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal disease, cirrhosis of the liver, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide, murder. Take your choice. Labor-saving machines have turned out to be body-killing devices. Our affluence has allowed both mobility and isolation of the nuclear family, and as a result, our divorce courts, our prisons and our mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves we have nearly lost ourselves. — John Piper

Every shattered dream we give to Jesus is integrated into a higher and even more blessed purpose. In short, if we have faith to believe it, there are no wasted sorrows, no wasted aspirations or dreams. Even in this life, we see that God is continually reshaping whatever we give Him. Indeed, the Christian life is a series of new beginnings. God Himself rushes in to fill the vacuum left in the wake of our own disappointments. Dreams left unfulfilled in this life will most assuredly be fulfilled in the life to come. Jesus brought our dream of healthy bodies back with Him when He was raised from the dead. Take a long look at the person sitting next to you in church. Someday he or she will be like Jesus! "Because I live, you also will live" (John 14:19). To those who are brokenhearted, Jesus assures us that fulfilling family relationships will be ours. — Erwin W. Lutzer

Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don't exist in the human experience. We must walk into the arena, whatever it may be - a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation - with courage and the willingness to engage. Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment and advice, we must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen. This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly. — Brene Brown

Descending the stairs from her room, I was tempted to go outside and find out if the shivering gut-wrench I'd felt as I came in really meant what I thought it did. But I stayed in the warmth of the house. I felt like I knew something about myself that I hadn't before, a bit of knowledge so new that if I became a wolf now, I might lose it and not remember it whenever I became Cole again.
I wandered down the main stairs, mindful that her father was somewhere in the house's depths while Isabel stayed up in her tower alone.
What would it be like, growing up in a house that looked like this? If I breathed too hard it would knock some decorative bowl off the wall or cause the perfectly arranged dried flowers to weep petals. Sure, my family had been affluent growing up - successful mad scientists generally are - but it never looked like this. Our lives had looked ... lived in. — Maggie Stiefvater

We were an imperfect family. I knew that. But at last we were on each other's side, dug in with a new and more profound commitment. Our happiness was hard won, it was ours and I was determined to keep us whole. — Dorothea Benton Frank

The transitional period was tough, I won't kid you. You go from a certain family dynamic to adjusting to a completely new one. It took a few months for us all to fi nd our feet. — Donna Air

The culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up with egostical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks. We're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going . So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing? — Morrie Schwartz.

Family life always diminishes the energy of a revolutionist. Children must be maintained in security ,and there's the need to work a great deal for one's break. The revolutionist ought without cease to develop every iota of his energy; he must deepen and broaden it; but this demands time. He must always be at the head, because we--the workingmen--are called by the logic of history to destroy the old world, to create the new life; and if we stop, if we yield to exhaustion, or are attracted by the possibility of a little immediate conquest, it's bad--it's almost treachery to the cause. No revolutionist can adhere closely to an individual--walk thorough life side by side with another individual--without distorting his faith; and we must never forget that our aim is not little conquests, but only complete victory! — Maxim Gorky

New Orleans, city of roaches, city of decay, city of our family, and of happy, happy people. — Anne Rice

In addition to billions in new 'stimulus' spending that our country can't afford, the Geithner plan also contains billions in tax increases on small and family-owned businesses while protecting the tax preferences of wealthy, multinational corporations. — Kevin McCarthy