Separate Parents Quotes & Sayings

You have to separate yourself from your parents. You do. In order to find yourself. — Patti Davis

Learning to think for yourself is how you separate yourself from your parents and make the transition from being a child to being an adult, though part of maturity is being able to take opposing viewpoints into consideration. — Belle Blackburn

Shut up, lumpen-head," Billy had said, setting the stage for our future amicable relationship.
I remembered that very well too. That had been a first too. Nobody had called me a lumpen-head before that. Tavi had had to explain what it meant, and then I had punched Billy in the stomach. People had to help Pradyun separate us and one of the ladies had exclaimed, "But she looked like such a sweet, little girl too!"
"She's not a girl," Billy had said. "She's an ugly lumpen-head, and her parents found her under a toadstool."
Billy had been a sweet, little boy himself. Still was. Hadn't changed a bit over the years. — Sonal Panse

For a long time I was cautious of working with my parents because I wanted to feel separate from them in the community. Now there's no more wasting time. — Lily Rabe

We shall therefore take an appropriately correct view of the origin of our life, if we consider our own embryos to have sprung immediately from those embryos whence our parents were developed, and these from the embryos of their parents, and so on for ever. We should in this way look on the nature of mankind, and perhaps on that of the whole animated creation, as one Continuous System, ever pushing out new branches in all directions, that variously interlace, and that bud into separate lives at every point of interlacement. — Francis Galton

He looked at the picture of his mother in the locket. Perhaps each of his parents loved him, however brokenly. He felt a sudden urge of anger at his father's almost casual assumption of the right to separate him from his mother: so sincere, yet so destructive. — M.L. Stedman

The tear on my mother's cheek got larger and larger. It detached from her face and became a shiny globe, widening outward like an inflating balloon. At first the tear floated in the air between them, but as it expanded it took my mother and father into itself. I saw them suspended, separate but beginning to slowly drift towards one another. Then my mother looked past my father's shoulder, looked through the bright skin of the tear, at me. The tear enlarged until at last, it took me in, too. It was warm and salt. As soon as I got used to the strange light inside the tear, I began to swim clumsily towards my parents. — Fred Chappell

I've seen the way you've been looking at me. Don't bullshit me, Pat. I live in the addition around back, which is completely separate from the house, so there's no chance of my parents walking in on us. I hate the fact that you wore a football jersey to dinner, but you can fuck me as long as we turn the lights out first. Okay? — Matthew Quick

There is nothing intrinsically better about a child who happily bounces off to school the first day and a child who is wary, watchful, and takes a longer time to separate from his parents and join the group. Neither one nor the other is smarter, better adjusted, or destined for a better life. — Ellen Galinsky

I cannot separate the man you are now from the boy you were then, and it's killing me.
I wanted everything for you, son.
I still do. — Blake Crouch

But feel what happens in the soul when you imagine children saying to their parents, "What you gave me, first of all, wasn't the right thing, and secondly, it wasn't enough. You still owe me." What do children have from their parents when they feel that way? Nothing. And what do the parents have from their children? Also nothing. Such children cannot separate from their parents. Their accusations and demands tie them to their parents so that, although they are bound to their parents, the children have no parents. They then feel empty, needy and weak.

This is the second Order of Love, that children take what their parents give in addition to life as it comes. — Bert Hellinger

There is great beauty in the notion of desire. Each of us is a child of the desire of our parents for each other. We are creatures of desire because we are creations of desire. The human heart discovers its most touching music when desire and love inform each other. When we love, we leave our separate solitudes and come toward union, where we complement each other. It is this ancient desire in every heart to discover and come home to its lost other half that awakens and activates its capacity for love and belonging. There are certain things that can happen to us only in solitude, and every life needs a rhythm of solitude in order to experience this. However, the experience of self-discovery, psychological integration, and spiritual growth can happen to us only when our desire draws us out of our shells and toward the precarious and life-giving sanctuary of another heart. — John O'Donohue

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
I lie in bed beside my little sister, listening to the singing in the yard. Life is transformed, by these voices, by these presences, by their high spirits and grand esteem, for themselves and each other. My parents, all of us, are on holiday. The mixture of voices and words is so complicated and varied it seems that such confusion, such jolly rivalry, will go on forever, and then to my surprise - for I am surprised, even though I know the pattern of rounds - the song is thinning out, you can hear the two voices striving.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
Then the one voice alone, one of them singing on, gamely, to the finish. One voice in which there is an unexpected note of entreaty, of warning, as it hangs the five separate words on the air. Life is. Wait. But a. Now, wait. Dream. — Alice Munro

Many neglected and abused children grow up to be adults who are afraid to take risks of striking out on their own. Many will remain dependent on their abusive parents and unable to separate from them. Others leave their abusive parents only to attach themselves to a partner who is controlling. — Beverly Engel

It was a very big moment that's burned into my mind. When I realized that I was smarter than my parents, I felt tremendous shame for having thought that. I will never forget that moment. This discovery, he later told friends, along with the fact that he was adopted, made him feel apart - detached and separate - from both his family and the world. — Walter Isaacson

Do not oversleep and miss the school bus-
you'll be late.
That's a habit teachers generally
don't appreciate.
Never tell your friends at school
that you still wet your bed.
They are sure to tease you,
and you'll wish that you were dead.

Never call your teacher a name
when she's not near you.
Teachers' ears are excellent,
so they can always hear you.

Do not read a textbook when your hands
aren't clean-it's tricky
to separate the pages when the pages
get real sticky.
When you go out for a team
it's always wise to practice.
When you are a substitute,
the bench can feel like cactus.

Do not copy homework from a friend
who is a dummy.
If you do, I'm sure that you
will get a grade that's crummy.

And if your report card's bad,
don't blame it on your buddy.
Kiss up to your parents quick,
or they might make you study. — Bruce Lansky

My parents stood still. It was like we were on two separate islands. Mom and Dad were on one, and I was on the other. And the ocean between us was the symbol of truth. The thing representing our truce. — Jenelle Jack Pierre

I love my parents and they're wonderful people, but they were strict, and I still look for ways to get even. When I got my own apartment for the very first time and they came to stay with me for the weekend, I made them stay in separate bedrooms. — Elayne Boosler

I don't know what 15-year-old doesn't have a desire to separate themselves from their parents and prove their independence. — Michelle Williams

Have some nice hot chocolate, something to eat, cuddle up under a blanket ... "
Under any other circumstances, I would have assumed that that last sentence meant, "Cuddle up under two separate blankets, spaced several feet apart, possibly with a lightly chained wolf between you," because that's what parents always mean. — Maureen Johnson

...all teenagers do this. All teenagers separate from their parents. To grow up is to grow apart. — Nicola Yoon

When I was a boy, I choked on a piece of candy outside the kitchen window for a few minutes while watching my parents making dinner. I thought I was going to die, but I didn't want to scare them. Our existence was so separate, a dying and a doing well, an outside and an inside. Trey Moody's poems hover in that cold, wet, refrigerator-lit place between the dying and the doing well, the outside and the inside. His poems are the thoughts of the person you love who is always standing behind you, slowly and silently suffocating. But they're not afraid to say hello, and please, and I'm scared. — Zachary Schomburg

Rationalizing him and the glass pipe, Dad smoked crack, but he was not a crackhead; it was just something he did. To do something didn't define you, I thought.
I saw Dad through a dusty lens that distorted our relationship, as tarnished as his pipe. He was no longer just our father; he was his own person, with an identity and label and body separate from his relationship with us. He was someone who was judged outside of the lens of fatherhood, outside of our connection. When he was in the streets, he was not Dad. He was Charlie the crackhead. — Janet Mock

In Buddhism, the word "emptiness" is a translation of the Sanskrit sunyata. It means "empty of a separate self." It is not a negative or despairing term. It is a celebration of interconnectedness, of interbeing. It means nothing can exist by itself alone, that everything is inextricably interconnected with everything else. I know that I must always work to remember that I am empty of a separate self and full of the many wonders of this universe, including the generosity of my grandparents and parents, the many friends and teachers who have helped and supported me along the path, and you dear readers, without whom this book could not exist. We inter-are, and therefore we are empty of an identity that is separate from our interconnectedness. — Chan Khong

This is the terrible thing girls like us have in common" she explained. "Parents, upbringings,lifestyles, that are painfully normal. Middle class."
It was almost amoral, being raised this way, she told me fiercely. We'd never really understand pain. And wasn't that the human condition? By shielding us from the real world, pressing their palms over our eyes during all the bad parts. our parents -our parents-were keeping us separate from humanity. We were something else entirely — Meg Haston

Why was she always so craven, so apologetic? He had always seen Ruth as separate, good and untainted. As a child, his parents had appeared to him as starkly black and white, the one bad and frightening, the other good and kind. Yet as he had grown older, he kept coming up hard in his mind against Ruth's willing blindness, to her constant apologia for his father, to the unshakeable allegiance to her false idol. — J.K. Rowling

3. The child is allowed to experience and express ordinary impulses, such as jealousy, rage, sexuality and defiance, because the parents have not disowned these feelings in themselves. 4. The child does not have to please the parent and can develop his own needs at his own developmental pace. 5. The child can depend on and use his parents because they are separate from him. 6. The parents' independence and good boundaries allow the child to separate self and object representation. 7. Because the child is allowed to display ambivalent feelings, he can learn to regard himself and the caregiver as "both good and bad," rather than splitting off certain parts as good and certain parts as bad. 8. The beginning of true object love is possible because the parents love the child as a separate object. — John Bradshaw

The room was a library. Not a public library, but a private library; that is, a collection of books belonging to Justice Strauss. There were shelves and shelves of them, on every wall from the floor to the ceiling, and separate shelves of them in the middle of the room. The only place were there weren't books was in one corner, where there were some large, comfortable-looking chairs and a wooden table with lamps hanging over them, perfect for reading. Although it was not as big as their parents library, it was cozy, and the Baudelaire children were thrilled. — Lemony Snicket

There are all sorts of different families, Katie. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy, or two families. And some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents. And some live in separate homes, in separate neighborhoods, in different areas of the country - and they may not see each other for days, or weeks, months ... even years at a time. But if there's love, dear ... those are the ties that bind, and you'll have a family in your heart, forever. — Anne Fine

From a child's point of view, there is rarely a great time for parents to separate, even if there has been a lot of commotion and fighting. — Susie Orbach

Too often, we try to extort from chosen others the fierce genetic loyalty we long for from our parents and feel for our kids. The fact is, even though our individual DNAs may conjoin to form a zygote and in due time a unique, freestanding being, we remain literally and existentially separate, our union perfect only apart from ourselves. — Autumn Stephens

Yet I remember the rule I set for myself-that I do something different from my mother ... I started to believe I couldn't really do that if I was following in the path of either of my parents ... That so-called rule helped me separate more fully from my mother and father, I realize, but maybe it also kept me from seeing what was right in front of me. — Sue Monk Kidd

My parents always told me that life is about asking questions which I didn't understand that until more recently. See the truth is like life is like a collection of questions really if you think about it. Or at least the ones we choose to acknowledge. See within those questions that we choose to acknowledge we answer them for ourselves because we have the need to and in those answers I believe that we find our own meaning, we find our own definition, we define what is we stand for, you know what I'm saying; who we are as people, as individuals, what we believe in. And that's how we celebrate our individuality. Now you would think that individuality would separate us but on the contrary the truth is we all answer pretty much the same basic questions for ourselves, they're not complicated questions you know. They're very simple, basic universal questions and that's why I wrote this song — Miguel

Just as children, step by step, must separate from their parents, we will have to separate from them. And we will probably suffer ... from some degree of separation anxiety: because separation ends sweet symbiosis. Because separation reduces our power and control. Because separation makes us feel less needed, less important. And because separation exposes our children to danger. — Judith Viorst

Lincoln was raised in the thick of Old School Calvinism. In Kentucky and Indiana, his parents belonged to a fire-breathing sect called Separate Baptism, in which congregants heard - in the tradition of Jonathan Edward's famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" - that they were bound for eternal hellfire, and nothing they could do or say or think would change their fate. Preachers did allow that a chosen few were ordained for grace and would be saved, but these fortunate ones had been selected by God before time began. As one Baptist preacher in Lincoln's Kentucky explained it, "Long before the morning stars sang together . . . the Almighty looked down upon the ages yet unborn, as it were, in review before him, and selected one here and another there to enjoy eternal life and left the rest to the blackness of darkness forever." Such Baptist ministers were so intense that it has been said that they "out-Calvined Calvin. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

Krishna children were taught that in the spiritual world there were no parents, only souls and hence this justified their being kept out of view from others, cloistered in separate buildings and sheltered from the evil material world. — Mary Garden

As you grow older, you start to realize that your parents have lives of their own, separate from you, but by that time your parents have formed the habit of keeping you out of their lives, and no matter how old you get they will never let you get to really know them. — Noah Cicero

It's like the old thing: The parents stay together for the kids, but the kids know that you don't want to be together. The kids would rather you be happy - and separate - than together and miserable. I don't want my kid to grow up around two parents who just don't work. — Jaime Pressly

And I think that our braver and better youth, besides their other honours and rewards, might have greater facilities of intercourse with women given them; their bravery will be a reason, and such fathers ought to have as many sons as possible. True. And the proper officers, whether male or female or both, for offices are to be held by women as well as by men - Yes - The proper officers will take the offspring of the good parents to the pen or fold, and there they will deposit them with certain nurses who dwell in a separate quarter; but the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be. Yes, he said, that must be done if the breed of the guardians is to be kept pure. They — Plato

I'll tell them all the good things and some difficulties. The parents may never accept what happened to them and yet accept their child. They're two separate things, the parental loss, and the actual person they will almost always end up loving. — Andrew Solomon

He is deemed an inappropriate guardian, whereas my parents who neglected us every day of our waking lives were always deemed appropriate guardians on account of the DNA issue. No one wants to separate children from their parents, even when their parents are fucked-up delinquents. — Lisa O'Donnell

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

It's in me alone that my parents forever mingle, sweetly, sourly, along separate sugar-phosphate backbones, the recipe for my essential self. I also blend John and Trudy in my daydreams - like every child of estranged parents, I long to remarry them, this base pair, and so unite my circumstances to my genome. — Ian McEwan

REBT, then, helps you not only to understand what you "are" but to change what you harmfully think, feel, and do. It accepts your desires, wishes, preferences, goals, and values, then tries to help you achieve them. But REBT shows you how to separate your preferences from your insistences - and thus keep from sabotaging your own goals. It gives you insight into what you are now doing rather than into what you (and your damned parents!) have done. — Albert Ellis