Picking Your Own Family Quotes & Sayings

My father, who grew up picking olives on the Greek island of Lesbos, was a doctor. So my family expected me to become a physician. — Peter Diamandis

It was after an incident such as this that my friends and family decided something must be done. They gathered for a confabulation and, having established that secure psychiatric care was beyond their means, they turned in despair to the publishing industry, which has a long history of picking up where social work leaves off. — Mark Forsyth

I started learning my lessons in Abbot Texas, where I was born in 1933. My sister Bobbie and I were raised by our grandparents [ ... ] We never had enough money, and Bobbie and I started working at an early age to help the family get by. That hard work included picking cotton. [ ... ] Picking cotton is hard and painful work, and the most lasting lesson I learned in the fields was that I didn't want to spend my life picking cotton. — Willie Nelson

The more you read, the more you will love to read. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Commitment is different in males and females. In females it is a desire to get married and raise a family. In males it means not picking up other women while out with one's girlfriend. — Rita Rudner

Am I picking you up tonight?" he asked. "Or do you still think I'm an ax murderer who might break into your house and off you and your family?"
"Pretty sure you'd go all parkour on us. Instead of using an ax."
"Parkour? You think I'd use your family as an obstacle course?"
"What?" I asked.
He smothered a laugh. "Parkour is non-contact."
I felt my face redden. How was I supposed to know all that guy crap? — Anna Cruise

I was startled to realize that in spite of everything, the last few months had had one area of lightness: not having to bear the tremendous weight of the responsibility neurosurgery demanded - and part of me wanted to be excused from picking up the yoke again. Neurosurgery is really hard work, and no one would have faulted me for not going back. (People often ask if it is a calling, and my answer is always yes. You can't see it as a job, because if it's a job, it's one of the worst jobs there is.) A couple of my professors actively discouraged the idea: "Shouldn't you be spending time with your family?" ("Shouldn't you?" I wondered. I was making the decision to do this work because this work, to me, was a sacred thing.) — Paul Kalanithi

it ain't as hard as picking cotton — Wynton Marsalis

And money, if the pile gets high enough, is something like a big political party: it does as much harm as it does good, it puts too much power in too few hands, and the closer you come to it the dirtier you get. — Gregory David Roberts

Absence has presence, sometimes, and that was what she felt. Absence like crushed-dead grass were something has been and is no longer. Absence where a thread has been ripped, ragged, from a tapestry, leaving a gap that can never be mended. — Laini Taylor

My family is Chilean, and I was born there. By the time I was four, we were living in San Antonio, Texas, and I just remember picking a blue bonnet and getting yelled at by some guy with a sheriff hat and a badge. I was traumatized. He told me it was the state flower, and I wasn't supposed to be messin' with it. — Pedro Pascal

I tramp a perpetual journey. — Walt Whitman

Luther goes so far as to say that vocation is a mask of God. That is, God hides Himself in the workplace, the family, the Church, and the seemingly secular society. To speak of God being hidden is a way of describing His presence, as when a child hiding in the room is there, just not seen. To realize that the mundane activities that take up most of our lives - going to work, taking the kids to soccer practice, picking up a few things at the store, going to church - are hiding-places for God can be a revelation in itself. Most people seek God in mystical experiences, spectacular miracles, and extraordinary acts they have to do. To find Him in vocation brings Him, literally, down to earth, makes us see how close He really is to us, and transfigures everyday life. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Like it or not, today we are all pioneers, picking our way through uncharted and unstable territory. The old rules are no longer reliable guides to work out modern gender roles and build a secure foundation for marriage. Wherever it is that people want to end up in their family relations today, even if they are totally committed to creating a so-called traditional marrige, they have to get there by a different route from the past. — Stephanie Coontz

Of course you can have a true Shadowhunter name," Will said. "You can have mine."
Tessa stared at him, all black and white against the black-and-white snow and stone. "Your name?"
Will took a step toward her, till they stood face-to-face. Then he reached to take her hand and slid off her glove, which he put into his pocket. He held her bare hand in his, his fingers curved around hers. His hand was warm and callused, and his touch made her shiver. His eyes were steady and blue; they were everything that Will was: true and tender, sharp and witty, loving and kind. "Marry me," he said. "Marry me, Tess. Marry me and be called Tessa Herondale. Or be Tessa Gray, or be whatever you wish to call yourself, but marry me and stay with me and never leave me, for I cannot bear another day of my life to go by that does not have you in it. — Cassandra Clare

I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

I don't come from a particularly musical family. My mother learned a bit of piano in Korea. When I was three, I apparently climbed up on our upright piano and started picking Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star out. — Charlie Albright

With leadership succession, families tend to focus on picking the next CEO. Families really need multiple leaders at all levels in their families and family businesses. — Andrew Keyt

Bree crossed her arms over her protruding belly. "I'm fine. No one has shot at me in the last twenty four hours, and my family is talking to me again. Things are looking up."
He grimaced at the mention of her family. "How fortunate for you."
Bree narrowed her eyes at him, picking up on the derogatory tone. "Well, you should know all about the importance of family. You'd do anything for yours, right? Bernardo says jump, you ask 'how high?' "
Alessandro felt a sick twist of guilt in his chest, "Well, congratulations, Brianna. You've worked very hard for the title of O'Reiley doormat. I hope it's all you've ever wanted. I hope you're happy."
"Blissfully," Bree shot back and turned on her heel, leaving him there filled with anger and regret. — E. Jamie

If you want a new tomorrow, then make new choices today. — Tim Fargo

Is it such a shameful thing, he thought, to be the man who likes to provide information for others, rather than be the one who has to use that information? — Brandon Sanderson

The mother was holding a baby, had a stroller with what looked like twin girls around three, and had a five-year-old boy who was running around the shelves with a finger shoved up his nose. I considered warning him that if he fell, he would poke his brain out, but it struck me that losing intelligence was not something he was worried about. — Eileen Cook

For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish ora German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making "ladies" dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase. — Stephanie Coontz

I was the oldest of the children in my family. I had to do a lot of diaper-changing and lunch-making. I was taking my little sister to ballet, picking up my brother, sort of being a super-nanny. — Vin Diesel

Janey was planning a short engagement, she'd simpered, and so, of course, the inevitable collection for the wedding present would soon follow. Of all the compulsory financial contributions, that is the one that irks me most. Two people wander around John Lewis picking out lovely items for themselves, and then they make other people pay for them. It's bare-faced effrontery. They choose things like plates, bowls and cutlery-I mean, what are they doing at the moment: shoveling food from packets into their mouths with their bare hands? I simply fail to see how the act of legally formalizing a human relationship necessitates friends, family and coworkers upgrading the contents of their kitchen for them. — Gail Honeyman

For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.'
Really,' I said.
We're passive-aggressive people,' she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. 'Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now, for instance, I'm not speaking to two of my sisters and one brother ... At mine [my house], silence is golden. And common.'
To me,' Reggie said, picking up a bottle of Vitamin A and moving it thoughtfully from one hand to the other, 'family is, like, the wellspring of human energy. The place where all life begins.' ...
Harriet considered this as she took a sip of coffee. 'Huh,' she said. 'I guess when someone else does something worse. Then you need people on your side, so you make up with one person, jsut as you're getting pissed off at another.'
So it's an endless cycle,' I said.
I guess.' She took another sip. 'Coming together, falling apart. Isn't that what families are all about? — Sarah Dessen

For Saffron," it said in shaky old writing on the damaged base, and on the other side, "Saffy's angel."
Saffron, picking up the broken fragments one by one, said it didn't matter. She hugged Rose and Indigo and Caddy and Sarah, and said again and again that it didn't matter, it didn't matter at all. — Hilary McKay

When did you guys even start speaking again?"
Ernie shrugged and popped a peanut into his mouth. "He's probably just sniffing around here so I leave him my property when I kick it." He drank his beer and leaned back into his easy chair. "Eh, he's a good kid. My sister's only son. He's family. Family's family. Never forget that, Conrad."
"Ernie, two commercial breaks ago, you told me that if I didn't try and break up my brother's wedding, I was a punk!"
Picking at his teeth, Ernie said, "If a girl's the one, all bets are off, family or no family. — Jenny Han

At length, when I considered it, I realized that the best of my actions were small things. Picking flowers and cooking food for my mother when she had been unwell, spending an afternoon with the children, sending money to my sister or kissing Henry's tiny head as he slept in the nursery before I left. I thought of every detail and afterwards I felt better. Hellfire and brimstone have never appealed to me and I admit I become easily confused thinking of right and wrong. But I do understand kindness. — Sara Sheridan

Owen was so tiny, we loved to pick him up; in truth, we couldn't resist picking him up. We thought it was a miracle: how little he weighed. This was also incongruous because Owen came from a family in the granite business. The Meany Granite Quarry was a big place, the equipment for blasting and cutting the granite slabs was heavy and dangerous-looking; granite itself is such a rough, substantial rock. But the only aura of the granite quarry that clung to Owen was the granular dust, the gray powder that sprang off his clothes whenever we lifted him up. He was the color of a gravestone; light was both absorbed and reflected by his skin, as with a pearl, so that he appeared translucent at times - especially at his temples, where his blue veins showed through his skin (as though, in addition to his extraordinary size, there were other evidence that he was born too soon). — John Irving

Hating Wall Street is an American tradition that dates back even to the days when Thomas Jefferson cursed that money lover Alexander Hamilton. And for centuries, the complaints about it have largely stayed the same: 'It does nothing! It creates chaos! It's a parasite that sucks hardworking Americans dry!' — Adam Davidson

You can only push the truth down for so long, and then it bubbles back up. — Cassandra Clare

Sometimes, it's better to leave some questions
unanswered." (TSoC) - H. El-Tahwagi — H. El-Tahwagi

All neurotics seek the religious — Carl Jung

You draw the best things from your parents and family. You're going to pick up some of the bad things as well - there's a temper that runs through my dad's side of the family that I'm not especially keen on picking up a giant block of. — Mark Ronson

Love is a tempestuous mistress.
And none of us shall ever master her. — Lisa Ann Sandell

I grew up babysitting and always enjoyed it. I love family. A couple of my closest friends have kids, and I'm their godfather, and that's one of my greatest pleasures in life, just picking them up from school and hanging out with them. — Matthew Perry

Dave put a lot of thought into picking out the books his dad would like least. — Theric Jepson

I come from a working-class family, and I've been working since I was 13, from babysitting to blueberry picking to factory work to bookstore work. And of course, being a mother and homemaker, the hardest work of all. — Patti Smith

If someone wants to be in your life they will find you. If they don't they will find an excuse. — Shannon L. Alder

We're a people at war,' she began, voice loud and clear. 'We're constantly attacked - but not just by Strigoi. By one another. We're divided. We fight with one another. Family against family. Royal against non-royal. Moroi against dhampir. Of course the Strigoi are picking us off. They're at least united behind a goal: killing.'
[ ... ]
'We are one people,' she continued. 'Moroi and dhampir alike.' Yeah, that got some gasps too. 'And while it's impossible for every single person to get their way, no one will get anything done if we don't come together and find ways to meet in the middle - even if it means making hard choices.'
[ ... ]
We've kept magic alongside technology. We conduct these sessions with scrolls and - with these.' She smiled and tapped her microphone. 'That's how we have survived. We hold onto our That's how we have survived. That's how we will survive. — Richelle Mead

In the old days of America when communities were separated by hundreds of miles, why were they able to thrive? Because if it was harvest time and the farmer was up in the tree picking apples and fell down and broke his leg, everybody pitched in and harvested his crops for him. If somebody got killed by a bear, everybody took care of their family. — Benjamin Carson

I wonder if Effie will still be wearing that silly pink wig, or is she'll be sporting some other unnatural color especially for the Victor Tour. — Suzanne Collins

What no one tells twentysomethings like Emma is that finally, and suddenly, they can pick their own families - they can create their own families - and these are the families that life will be about. These are the families that will define the decades ahead. — Meg Jay