Quotes & Sayings About Relatives

I have a completely worthless degree: a BS in Photojournalism from Boston University (BU). With this degree, I suppose I could have gotten a job teaching grade school kids how to photograph their relatives, but knowing about B&W photo processing and developing and how to shoot a picture story is good basic info that every photographer should have. — Peter Menzel

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices. — George Bernard Shaw

Ain't nothing wrong with being a woman, gancho," Lopen said. "Some of my relatives are women. — Brandon Sanderson

The light irradiates white peaks of Annapurna marching down the sky, in the great rampart that spreads east and west for eighteen hundred miles, the Himalaya- the alaya (abode, or home) of hima (snow).Hibiscus, frangipani, bougainvillea: seen under snow peaks, these tropical blossoms become the flowers of heroic landscapes. Macaques scamper in green meadow, and a turquoise roller spins in a golden light. Drongos, rollers, barbets, and white Eqyptian vulture are the common birds, and all have close relatives in East Africa. — Peter Matthiessen

No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. 7 Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help. — Anonymous

It's a great story for us whenever an entrepreneur makes a crazy amount of money and we get to tell the world about it. For the entrepreneur? Not so much. Hitherto unknown relatives, entrepreneurs seeking angel investments, money managers and supposed baby-mamas all come out of the woodwork with dollar signs in their eyes. — Sarah Lacy

If man was the relative of animals, then animals were the relatives of man, and in degrees bearers of that inwardness of which man, the most advanced of their kin, is conscious in himself. — Hans Jonas

Suddenly, I get this giddy desire to shock these guys a little. I continue, "These baboons really are our relatives. In fact, this baboon is my cousin." And with that I lean over and give Daniel a loud messy kiss on his big ol' nose. I get more of a response than I bargained for. The Masai freak and suddenly, they are waving their spears real close to my face, like they mean it. One is yelling, "He is not your cousin, he is not your cousin! A baboon cannot even cook ugali!" (Ugali is the ubiquitous and repulsive maize meal that everyone eats here. I almost respond that I don't really know how to cook the stuff either, but decide to show some prudence at last.) "He is not your cousin! — Robert M. Sapolsky

Coal, oil and gas are called fossil fuels, because they are mostly made of the fossil remains of beings from long ago. The chemical energy within them is a kind of stored sunlight originally accumulated by ancient plants. Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene. Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relatives. — Carl Sagan

Do you mind?' He inquired politely as he lowered himself into the chair.

'Do I mind what?' She examined his ears as if they were curious phenomena. 'Rabies, dogs, aged relatives or standing around in the rain?'

'Do you mind me sitting here?'

'I can please myself whether or not I endure it. That's freedom, isn't it? — Eric Frank Russell

Most advice on child-rearing is sought in the hope that it will confirm our prior convictions. If the parent had wished to proceedin a certain way but was made insecure by opposing opinions of neighbors, friends, or relatives, then it gives him great comfort to find his ideas seconded by an expert. — Bruno Bettelheim

You wouldn't believe how many FDA officials or relatives or acquaintances of FDA officials come to see me as patients in Hanover. You wouldn't believe this, or directors of the AMA, or ACA, or the presidents of orthodox cancer institutes. That's the fact — Hans Alfred Nieper

She had hauled out Grandma O'Donnell's crystal plates, the ones Gram claimed were hand-cut by our distant relatives in County Kerry during the potato famine. She also said Big Foot crashed her eighteenth birthday party. — Susan Kaye Quinn

Potato salad in the South is nothing less than the principal smuggler of cholesterol into the festive, careless heart. It is pure poison beneath the facade of bland puritan propriety. It is the food of choice at any food banquet of smiling relatives who celebrate tacitly among themselves the dark twining of two of their promising youth. — Padgett Powell

Once a patient goes brain dead and relatives sign his organ donation consent form, he will get the best medical treatment of his life. A hospital code blue may be a call for doctors to rush to the bedside of a beating heart cadaver who needs his or her heart defibrillated. — Dick Teresi

A harem is not a brothel, as so many Westerners erroneously believe. It is merely the women's living quarters. Male relatives can join them
but no male nonrelatives may do so. It is hardly a den of eroticism. — Phyllis Chesler

The custom of saluting [i.e., embracing] ladies by their relatives and friends was introduced, it is said, by the early Romans, not out of respect originally, but to find by their breath whether they had been drinking wine, this being criminal for women to do, as it sometimes led to adultery. — Joseph Haydn

Show, Trisha. Dennis had seen a Trisha episode about people with depression, and thought maybe his dad had that. Dennis loved Trisha. It was a daytime talk show where ordinary people were given the opportunity to talk about their problems, or yell abuse at their relatives, and it was all presided over by a kindly looking but judgemental woman conveniently called ... Trisha. For a while Dennis thought life without his mum would be some kind of adventure. He'd stay up late, eat take-aways and watch rude comedy shows. However, as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into years, he realised that it wasn't an adventure at all. — David Walliams

No matter where you're from - you can be Native American, Italian, Jewish, Latino, African-American - whatever you are, we're all distant relatives. — Nas

That's not really important what religion people are attached to, because by the same argument I have a lot of Christian friends and Moslem friends. It's just happened that I do have a lot of relatives and friends who are Jewish. — Paul McCartney

Greyfriars, like other cemeteries, employed occasional night watchmen, but guards were easily bribed and it was not unusual to see families, rich and poor, huddled round the graves of recently deceased relatives waiting for their loved ones to decompose enough to be useless to the anatomists. — Jan-Andrew Henderson

Close friends and relatives, while not meaning to do so, often handicap one through "opinions" and sometimes through ridicule, which is meant to be humorous. Thousands of men and women carry inferiority complexes with them all through life, because some well-meaning, but ignorant person destroyed their confidence through "opinions" or ridicule. — Napoleon Hill

The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's eugenics studies were initially endowed by Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the head of the Krupp munitions monolith, and James Loeb, of the Kuhn-Loeb banking family. Loeb's relatives, the Warburgs, were banking partners of William Rockefeller, and both families were responsible for setting up the American Harriman family - also movers and shakers in eugenics - in business. — Jim Keith

On top of the good was a hideously ugly bronze statue in the modern style. The statue was of a couple, dressed in togas, wrapped in an embrace. Cupped in their hands was a piece of fruit. I couldn't be sure, because realism did not appear to be the artist's specialty, but it looked to me like a pomegranate.
"Good God," Frank, who'd trailed after us, said when he saw the statue. "Rector's even sicker than any of us thought. I've never wished I was blind before, like Graves, but I do now, because then I'd never have to look at that again."
"Frank," John said, his gaze on my face. "Be quiet."
"But what do they do in here?" Frank wanted to know. "Have picnics with their dead relatives and admire their ugly art? — Meg Cabot

I'm afraid of sudden death. I'd like to know I'm going to die. That's why death row wouldn't be so bad, although it's not pleasant. And cancer, inoperable, wouldn't be bad. That's not pleasant either. But to drop dead suddenly, it's hard on everybody else. My family, my relatives, my friends. It's just not a good way to go. I want to know I'm going to die. — Jack Kevorkian

Onyx is angry," Damian says. "Onyx has a right to be angry. You've got to remember, for many elephants, their life is that of a human in a war-torn country. Ravaged homes, killed relatives, separation," Damian says. Here's another thing I've learned over two months
every elephants here has a sad story. Every captive elephant's story is one of loss and separation. Something to remember every time you see happy people getting elephant rides. — Deb Caletti

Of course, most luxury goods in China are for corrupted officials and their relatives. And that made China become the biggest luxury-goods market. In this kind of dictatorship, in this kind of totalitarian society, it is easy to make deals that you cannot make in a democratic society. — Ai Weiwei

You share a toast with me:
Here's to seasonal
madness, part-time
relatives, and
substitutes for love. — Ellen Hopkins

Nothing is more false and more indiscreet than always to want to choose what mortifies us in everything. By this rule a person would soon ruin his health, his business, his reputation, his relations with his relatives and friends, in fact every good work which Providence gives him. — Francois Fenelon

Just across from Bismarck stood Fort Lincoln where friends and relatives of Custer's dead cavalrymen still lived, and these emigrating Sioux could perceive such bitterness in the air that one Indian on the leading boat displayed a white flag. Yet, in accordance with the laws of human behavior, the farther downstream they traveled the less hostility they encountered, and when the tiny armada reached Standing Rock near the present border of South Dakota these Indians were welcomed as celebrities. Men, women and children crowded aboard the General Sherman to shake hands with Sitting Bull. Judson Elliot Walker, who was just then finishing a book on Custer's campaigns, had to stand on a chair to catch a glimpse of the medicine man and reports that he was wearing "green wire goggles." No details are provided, so green wire goggles must have been a familiar sight in those days. Sitting Bull mobbed by fans while wearing green wire goggles. It sounds like Hollywood. — Evan S. Connell

War provides some people with a sense of purposefulness. The drumbeat of war quickens the pulse of neighbors, relatives, tribes, and nations. Hostile nations amass weapons of destruction claiming that they seek peace through deterrence. When war comes, advocates of arms galvanize the citizenry by proclaiming the inevitability of conflict. Each side's propaganda machine cast the campaign of present war as the next Great War. Generals brashly promote armed conflict as the war to end all other wars. Saber-rattlers proclaim that the opposition's militant disciples instituted this ordeal of conquest and destruction. — Kilroy J. Oldster

At the end of every day, having a clientele that speaks well of you, that's the largest source of business. I don't care what kind of business you're in. Clients referring us to their friends or relatives is so much more powerful than any advertising we could ever do. — Charles R. Schwab

You know, all my songs are relatives, brothers, sisters, cousins. — David Coverdale

I sit down and say, and I run all my friends and relatives and enemies one by one in this, without entertaining any angers or gratitudes or anything, and I say, like 'Japhy Ryder, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha,' then I run on, say to 'David O. Selznick, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha' though I don't use names like David O. Selznick, just people I know because when I say the words 'equally a coming Buddha' I want to be thinking of their eyes, like you take Morley, his blue eyes behind those glasses, when you think 'equally a coming Buddha' you think of those eyes and you really do suddenly see the true secret serenity and the truth of his coming Buddhahood. Then you think of your enemy's eyes. — Jack Kerouac

The house of a childless person is a void, all directions are void to one who has no relatives, the heart of a fool is also void, but to a poverty stricken man all is void. — Chanakya

We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle. — J.D. Salinger

If one were to just understand the worldly life and what it is, he would attain liberation [moksha]. The worldly life is 'relative'. And "All these relatives are temporary adjustments". — Dada Bhagwan

I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton woool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap. — John Steinbeck

I was always a drama queen. I remember playing in the kitchen, trying to get my mom to think I was dead and call the police. When she didn't, I would cry. I was always theatrical. I don't think any of my relatives are surprised. — Amy Lee

I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job. — Bill Murray

It appears that time has turned that young woman, who imagined herself a romantic heroine, into something of a comic character, but I remain fond of her. We are relatives, after all. — Siri Hustvedt

Fighting hard to protect yourself and your relatives is good for your genes, but when captured and escape is not possible, giving up short of dying and making the best you can of the new situation is also good for your genes. — Keith Henson

I didn't fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel at night. Most everyone else was a maths or economics major; most everyone else had relatives or family in banking. — Philipp Meyer

If anything, which ought not to happen, happens in your neighborhood, neighbors come as they are to help; relatives dress first. — Hesiod

When you use force, people get hurt, and when you kill people, their relatives don't like it. And usually war has some unanticipated consequences so it's something you shouldn't launch into, on the expectation that this is going to rally the nation. This is not like 'Friday Night Lights'. — Wesley Clark

It does appear that in some other cultures the work of motherhood is not left entirely up to one person the way it is here, so a baby can be handed around to many relatives, which gives the mother some blessed relief. Our society tends to elevate pregnancy and childbirth to unrealistic romantic heights then leave women on their own to struggle with the task, making them wonder what they are doing wrong when at times it all seems too much. — Robin Barker

You don't have to rush out to become the mayor of your city or the president of the United States in order to help others, but you can begin with your relatives and friends and the people around you. In fact, you can start with yourself. The important point is to realize that you are never off duty. — Chogyam Trungpa

Judging Natalie as my mother had judged me was, I felt like telling her son, just my ass-backward way of showing love. I'd spent my life trying to translate that language, and now I realized I had come to speak it fluently. When was it that you realized the thread woven through your DNA carried the relationship deformities of your blood relatives as much as it did their diabetes and bone density? — Alice Sebold

English, although the official language of Nigeria, was a formal language with which strangers and non-relatives addressed you. It had the potency of digging craters between you and your friends or relatives if one of you switched to using it. So, our parents hardly spoke English, except in moments like this, when the words were intended to pull the ground from beneath our feet. — Chigozie Obioma

I see ... a pile of skulls and bones. For the first time since my arrival, what I see before me is too painful, and I break down completely. These are my relatives, friends and neighbors, I keep thinking ... It is a long time before I am calm again. And then I am able, with my bare hands, to rearrange the skulls and bones so that they are not scattered about. — Dith Pran

Some people will only love you as much as they can use you. their loyalty ends where the benefits stop. — Honeya

Rather than following a [genealogical] 'line', I find myself drawn to all the people I encounter, including those who, only by the most obtuse reckoning, can be thought of as relatives. Every life deserves telling; none is without drama and change. — Alison Light

I regard large inherited wealth as a misfortune, which merely serves to dull men's faculties. A man who possesses great wealth should, therefore, allow only a small portion to descend to his relatives. Even if he has children, I consider it a mistake to hand over to them considerable sums of money beyond what is necessary for their education. To do so merely encourages laziness and impedes the healthy development of the individual's capacity to make an independent position for himself. — Alfred Nobel

(whom they could not find) and some sympathetic relatives. The poverty hurt, and they assumed, correctly, it had bred the intense desire to succeed. — John Grisham

Welsh women aren't the most tactile unless they're your relatives. And then you don't want them to be. — Rhys Ifans

Few influential people involved with the Internet claim that it is a good in and of itself. It is a powerful tool for solving social problems, just as it is a tool for making money, finding lost relatives, receiving medical advice, or, come to that, trading instructions for making bombs. — Esther Dyson

People are vaccinated with dangerous chemicals during their childhood, indoctrinated with immorality through television while growing up, taught to reject God by their teachers, fed with genetically modified food, and led to suspect others by their relatives and friends, and then you wonder why it's so difficult to find a normal person in this modern world, why nobody assumes responsibility for their words and behavior, and why everyone is so selfishly abusive. The biblical apocalypse has begun and the zombies are everywhere. It's just that we call them stupid and selfish instead. But they do act like there's no life inside of them anymore. There are no more normal human beings around. The survivors of this apocalypse are extremely scarce and must be treasured. — Robin Sacredfire

When two members of a family or two intimate friends are separated, and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or friend who has been travelling always seems to place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage when the two first meet. The sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old habits passively preserved in the other, seems at first to part the sympathies of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both, between them on either side. — Wilkie Collins

Sometimes family doesn't always consist of your relatives or by blood. Sometimes your best friends can feel more like family than your cousins. I think everybody kind of has that same feeling. When you go through an accident together, when you go through a traumatic event, sometimes that brings you closer together. — Michael B. Jordan

The most of the serious errors happen in our life,when we ignore our owns pain for us!! — Umakant

I am willing to believe that my unobtainable sixty seconds within a sponge or a flatworm might not reveal any mental acuity that I would care to call consciousness. But I am also confident [ ... ] that vultures and sloths, as close evolutionary relatives with the same basic set of organs, lie on our side of any meaningful (and necessarily fuzzy) border and that we are therefore not mistaken when we look them in the eye and see a glimmer of emotional and conceptual affinity. — Stephen Jay Gould

The irrational may be attractive in the abstract, but not in cab drives, dinner guests, or elderly relatives. — Mason Cooley

I live very well, but I support a lot of relatives. — Joan Rivers

To be honest, it's a real relief to go to Canada where I can be among my relatives. Just the kind of break I need. Strange enough, when I'm there, I can't wait to get back to Guyana. There's something that's always calling me back, something in the blood, I guess. Father Martin to Carl Dias in Racing With The Rain. — Ken Puddicombe

I was so shy. I used to cross the street so I wouldn't even have to talk to my relatives, much less strangers. That's not shy, that's wise. But I found that that when you had a journalist's notebook in your hand it wasn't really you, you see. — Geraldine Brooks

A young lady's most natural ally is her sister although sometimes our own relatives are as inscrutable to us as an antipodean. — Anna Godbersen

Hermes gazed up at the stars. 'My dear young cousin, if there's one thing I've learned over the eons, it's that you can't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it. It doesn't matter if they hate you, or embarrass you, or simply don't appreciate your genius for inventing the Internet
— Rick Riordan

-Elves never make any major decision until they have thought the matter over for at least a year or two, gone round to all their friends and relatives and discussed the problem, done research, read tomes, consulted the sages.
-And what happens then?
- By then they've usually forgotten what it was they meant to do in the first place. — Margaret Weis

Our relatives are ours by chance, but we can choose our friends. — Jacques Delille

Who's he going to outwit?" Sophia asked.
"Relatives." Grandmother said. "Nasty relatives. They tell him what to do without asking him what he wants, and so there's nothing at all he really does want. — Tove Jansson

My anxiety and pain during the Scud attacks on Israel, where some of my family lives, did not cancel out my fear and anguish for the victims of the bombardment of Iraq, where I also have relatives. — Ella Shohat

We live in relative world with relatives. — Deyth Banger

A person may have no relatives anywhere, but Mahamaya may make him keep a cat and thus make him worldly. This is how She plays! — Sarada Devi

In terms of foods for me, I think I have more of the usual associations - foods from childhood that I associate with care and love, from relatives or special restaurants like the kind elderly man who dusted seasoning salt on French fries at the corner burger joint. — Aimee Bender

Down in the city are the nice houses and the so-so houses and the lovers making out in dark yards and the babies crying for their moms, and I wonder if, other than Jesus, has this ever happened before. Maybe it happens all the time. Maybe there's angry dead all over, hiding in rooms, covered with blankets, bossing around their scared, embarrassed relatives. Because how would we know? — George Saunders

I went to hockey camp at Michigan because my dad has some relatives in the Ann Arbor area. We went to visit them as kids, and you start to learn the language from being around people. At the same time, when I got to college, I thought my English was better than it really was. I learned a lot over my four years. — Carl Hagelin

While there is widespread recognition that the War on Drugs is racist and that politicians have refused to invest in jobs or schools in their communities, parents of offenders and ex-offenders still feel intense shame - shame that their children have turned to crime despite the lack of obvious alternatives. One mother of an incarcerated teen, Constance, described her angst this way: "Regardless of what you feel like you've done for your kid, it still comes back on you, and you feel like, 'Well, maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I messed up. You know, maybe if I had a did it this way, then it wouldn't a happened that way.'" After her son's arrest, she could not bring herself to tell friends and relatives and kept the family's suffering private. Constance is not alone. — Michelle Alexander

It's hard not to be impressed by my older relatives. — Gia Coppola

Finally, he smiled, and although his smile was bumpy because some of his teeth were jagged and broken, it was a warming, infectious smile that was reflected in his eyes. It made her smile widely in return. She felt as if the room had been lit up. He held out his arms, and she went across the room to him, almost running. She buried her face in his shirt, her nose wrinkling up as the scent of his cologne mixed with the nutty, sourish smell of camphor that filled the room. He put his arms around her, but gently, so that there was space between his forearms and her back, holding her as if she was to fragile to hug properly. Awkwardly, he patted her light, bushy aureole of dark brown hair, repeating: Good girl. Fine daughter. — Helen Oyeyemi

In TIME June 7, 2010
On the sustainability of the publishing industry, in the Chicago Tribune:
"I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numbers ... The future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $175." - 5/26/10 — Garrison Keillor

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

Do you want to know something from the beyond? Do you want to chat with divine beings face to face? It is indispensable to enter into the region of the dead at will, to visit the celestial regions, to know other worlds of the infinite space. Outside of the physical body, one can give to himself the luxury of invoking beloved relatives who already passed through the doors of death. They will concur to our call, then we can personally chat with them ... When out of the physical body, we can acquire complete knowledge about the mysteries of death and life. Out of the physical body, we can invoke the angels in order to talk personally with them face to face. — Samael Aun Weor

During the ice age, many animals died of cold, so the porcupines decided to band together to provide one another with warmth and protection. But their spines or quills kept sticking into their surrounding companions, precisely those who provided most warmth. And so they drifted apart again. And again many of them died of cold. They had to make a choice: either risk extinction or accept their fellow porcupines' spines. Very wisely, they decided to huddle together again. They learned to live with the minor wounds inflicted by their relatives, because the key to their survival was that shared warmth. — Paulo Coelho

If one drops dead in the street, friends and loved ones are shocked, stricken, but a long lingering death loses all nobility and drama, while relatives and friends await the inevitable end in a succession of weary anti-climaxes. — Alanna Knight

The inspiration was this great group of 40 or 50 relatives, sometimes for Thanksgiving or Passover or something and my brothers would just go up and make them laugh. — Billy Crystal

When I came to America from Sweden, Mother and I, we went to Chicago where our relatives lived. — Ann-Margret

Art and order, the relatives that refuse to relate. — Elfriede Jelinek

Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Asleep was the way Harry liked the Dursleys best; it wasn't as though they were ever any help to him awake. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley were Harry's only living relatives. They were Muggles who hated and despised magic in any form, which meant that Harry was about as welcome in their house as dry rot. They had explained away Harry's long absences at Hogwarts over the last three years by telling everyone that he went to St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys. They knew perfectly well that, as an underage wizard, Harry wasn't allowed to use magic outside Hogwarts, but they were still apt to blame him for anything that went wrong about the house. Harry had never been able to confide in them or tell them anything about his life in the Wizarding world. The very idea of going to them when they awoke, and telling them about his scar hurting him, and about his worries about Voldemort, was laughable. — J.K. Rowling

As she died, Mary was alone on the planet as were Dwayne Hoover or Kilgore Trout. She had never reproduced. There were no friends or relatives to watch her die. So she spoke her very last words on the planet to Cyprian Ukwende. She did not have enough breath left to make her vocal cords buzz. She could only move her lips noiselessly.
Here is all she had to say about death: 'Oh my, oh my.'
...
Like all Earthlings at the point of death, Mary Young sent faint reminders of herself to those who had known her. She released a small could of telepathic butterflies, and one of these brushed Dwayne Hoover, nine miles away.
Dwayne heard a tired voice from somewhere behind his head, even though no one was back there. It said this to Dayne: 'Oh my, oh my.
... — Kurt Vonnegut

My family tree spreads wide as well. I am a great ape, and you are a great ape, and so are chimpanzees and orangutans and bonobos, all of us distant and distrustful cousins.
I know this is troubling.
I too find it hard to believe there is a connection across time and space, linking me to a race of ill-mannered clowns.
Chimps. There's no excuse for them. — Katherine Applegate

CJ's peace was restored.
Momentarily.
"Oh shit shit shit," a woman said. Her voice rippled with the kind of panic CJ expected from the bride today, but her husky undertones were too low for her to be any of his female relatives.
Perhaps the confessional hadn't been a gift from God after all.
"If that's what you need to do, but not right now, please," CJ said.
Her shriek splintered his last hopes for peace. "Ohmigod!" his intruder gasped.
"Not generally, but hey, if that's what you want to call me, I'm game. — Jamie Farrell

I hope someday we can stamp out illiteracy in America. Of course you'll have to kill alot of my relatives to do it. — Jeff Foxworthy

I suppose it must be admitted that I was raised in a "dysfunctional" family, but in truth, I do not think I had any sense of that as I was growing up. Probably part of the reason was that all of my extended kin had families at least as dysfunctional as mine. Just to give a little of the flavor of it, my "Aunt Fern," who lived just across the street and was one of the most present and puissant female relatives in my life, was, to be genealogically precise, my mother's brother's, first wife's, second husband's, father's, 3rd, 4th, and 5th wife. (She married "Uncle Lew" three times in the course of her seven matrimonial ventures.) — Carlfred Broderick

Insignificant, is the loss of relatives, wealth and fame; The loss of wisdom is the greatest loss. Insignificant, is the increase of relatives, wealth and fame; The increase of wisdom is the highest gain. Therefore, you should train yourselves thus: "We will grow in the increase of wisdom" Thus you should train yourselves. — Gautama Buddha

Success is a relative term. More success, more relatives. — V. P. Kale

If the Great Way perishes there will morality and duty. When cleverness and knowledge arise great lies will flourish. When relatives fall out with one another there will be filial duty and love. When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants. — Lao-Tzu

American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he's too powerful; you can't give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman's relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it's still a story about your relatives visiting. — Grant Morrison

Finger pointing does not provide answers to grieving relatives — Bennie Thompson

Trolls have a longstanding animosity for goats
"Who's that trip-tapping across my bridge!?"
and this led me to think that perhaps trolls are related to goats, since it seems a lot more plausible to me that your relatives would make you insane than some random hooved mammal, however ecologically destructive it might be. What if trolls evolved from goats? Or, no, better yet, what if goats evolved from trolls? Or were domesticated from trolls by human shepherds? And the trolls despise their domesticated cousins as a disgrace to the once-proud troll race, (much as I assume wolves would despise Chihuahuas if they ever gave them much thought) and eat them at every opportunity. — Ursula Vernon