Quotes & Sayings About Sibling Relationships

Whoa, that's the kind of little sister I can dig!" said Edison.
"Yes, we're all alike," I said. "We cover for you, we lie for you, we take the heat for you. We clean up your messes and mollify our parents for you. We never fail to come across with undying adoration, whether or not you deserve it, and we can't take our lives as seriously as yours. We snuffle up the crumbs from your table on the rare occasions you notice we're alive. — Lionel Shriver

My mother says we're supposed to make mistakes. That's the way we learn. Rocky Ryan in Bully At Ambush Corner. — Karen Mueller Coombs

Life is a chain of choices. Making the correct one is never easy."
"That's for sure," agreed Rocky.
"But if we didn't make difficult choices, right or wrong," said Mr. Veraldi, "we wouldn't learn anything worth knowing." Rocky Ryan and his viola teacher, Mr. Veraldi, in Bully at Ambush Corner. — Karen Mueller Coombs

You know, I don't think your brother dislikes you as much as you think. After all, he gave up a kingdom to stay with his family. — C.J. Milbrandt

Sibling relationships figure in a lot of my books. You don't often see relationships between adult siblings explored in fiction. — Dara Horn

Sibling relationships are complicated. All family relationships are. Look at Hamlet. — Maurice Saatchi

Grow up, Bailey."
"That is precisely what I'm doing," Bailey says. "I don't care if you don't understand that. Staying here won't make me happy. It will make you happy because you're insipid and boring, and an insipid, boring life is enough for you. It's not enough for me. It will never be enough for me. So I'm leaving. Do me a favor and marry someone who will take decent care of the sheep. — Erin Morgenstern

We're learning how important it is both to preserve sibling relationships if they work and repair them if they're broken. We're also learning a lot about nonliteral siblings - stepsiblings, half-siblings - and the surprising power they can have. — Jeffrey Kluger

Thanks for not talking with your fists," I said. I have a little sister, and I'm not sure I'd be as understanding with any of her boyfriends.
"I've seen you fight," he said, turning. "It would've been a terribly short conversation. — Lish McBride

The more you love,the more love you have to give.It's the only feeling we have which is infinite ... — Christina Westover

Yeah, and we could fly in on dragons and release a cloud of sugar plum fairies to tiptoe in an get the watch. — Mora Early

Wyatt told me once that if tenderness were a disease, I'd be terminal. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Novels shouldn't aspire to answer questions, and I wouldn't presume to offer advice about love or marriage in any case. What's fascinating to me about marriage as a subject for fiction - a subject that fiction has taken on with gusto since the 19th century - is how unknowable other people's relationships are. Even the marriages of your parents, your siblings, your closest friends always remain something of a mystery. Only in fiction can you pretend to know people completely. — Nell Freudenberger

I'd called Marin a nuisance, had made her feel unwelcome and unwanted, the same way I was feeling now. Not being wanted was the loneliest feeling in the world, it seemed, and if I could have had one more moment with Marin, I would have been sure to tell her I didn't mean it. She wasn't a pest. I loved her. She was wanted. More than she could ever know. — Jennifer Brown

Still, I could have been kinder." She frowned, her eyes wandering. "Sibling relationships can be complex. I wonder, sometimes, if my own actions had some bearing upon the paths my brothers chose. Could I have been a better sister to them? Perhaps, as a young ymbryne, I was too focused on myself. — Ransom Riggs

Hence my obstinate emphasis on stylistic continuity from work to work rather than specific sibling relationships between the individual work and other members of its stylistic 'family' in the world outside. — Brian Ferneyhough

I'm proud of you, son," he said. "I guess it has finally sunk in that it's important to stand up for yourself in this world."
Rocky shook his head. "It's more important to stand up for someone who can't stand up for herself," he had answered.
Rocky Ryan speaking with his father. — Karen Mueller Coombs

I don't feel the need to explain my actions to her. I don't clarify, I don't doubt, I don't worry. I don't tell her everything, not anymore, but I tell her more than anyone else, by far. I tell her as much as I can. — Gillian Flynn

The ice cold fear I'd felt, not knowing if Wyatt was alive, pressed into the wall with other girls and surrounded by guys who were unspeakably brave, hit my body again in a wave. This was trauma - the gift that keeps on giving. — Laura Anderson Kurk

She's my /sister./" He had no doubt that Clarisse was telling the truth: that Darri was down here in the caves, that she was trying to end the spell. And that she was about to die. "If you kill her, I'll tear this country down. I'll grind silver into the soil. I swear it."
Clarisse blinked at him, completely unconcerned. "Why? You don't love her."
"I don't like her," Varis snarled. "I /do/ love her. — Leah Cypess

In the months before the repatriation her heart had hardened around her sister's absence, letting her love Natasha in memory as she could never love her in reality. — Anthony Marra

It was the sibling thing, I suppose. I was fascinated by the intricate tangle of love and duty and resentment that tied them together. The glances they exchanged; the complicated balance of power established over decades; the games I would never play with rules I would never fully understand. And perhaps that was key: they were such a natural group that they made me feel remarkably singular by comparison. To watch them together was to know strongly, painfully, all that I'd been missing. — Kate Morton

I've always had this interest in sibling relationships because I don't have any siblings. I'm completely a product of the one-child policy in China, so I always kind of wished that I had an older brother or a younger brother or sister just to have that bond, so I find myself constantly writing about that relationship. — Marie Lu

Siblings may be ambivalent about their relationships in life, but in death the power of their bond strangles the surviving heart. Death reminds us that we are part of the same river, the same flow from the same source, rushing towards the same destiny. Were you close? Yes, but we didn't know it then. — Barbara Ascher

Jill had three basic statements about life,
1. It is your life, usually with some added social commentary.
2. What you want and what you get are usually two entirely different things.
3. No one ever said that life was fair. — Nicholas Sparks

Often the right path is the one that may be hardest for you to follow. But the hard path is also the one that will make you grow as a human being. — Karen Mueller Coombs

The love between a brother and sister just over a year apart in age held fast. It wasn't twinship, and it wasn't romance, but it was more like a passionate loyalty to a dying brand. — Meg Wolitzer

Even after Sonja graduated secondary school at the top of her class and matriculated to the city university biology department, their parents found more to love in Natasha. Sonja's gifts were too complex to be understood, and therefore less desirable. — Anthony Marra

Similar to siblings, French Fries all stem from the same family, the potato family. Yet each and every one is different. A different shape, a different flavor, a different purpose, etc. Now, despite all these differences, each French fry in the batch will share a similar origin story. However, the outcome will be unique. The point is to have patience with your sibling French fry and realize that life imprints differently on each and every one of us. Some of us will be salty, some of us will be peppered, but in the end we are all just trying to catch up. — Hannah Hart

are you because of me?
am I me because of you?
the lines have long since blurred.

if, that is, they ever existed."

from "The Complication of Sisters — Katherine Mariaca-Sullivan

You cannot decide how many children your parents will give birth to, but you can identify the sibling(s) (if any) with whom you can have a healthy relationship. — Widad Akreyi

Whether our caretaker was our mom, dad, uncle, aunt, grandparent, foster parent, or sibling, our blueprint of what a relationship is supposed to look like is drafted by what we observed from our caretaker's relationship. If our caretaker took their significant other back multiple times, made excuses for their actions, helped them battle demons, turned a blind eye to their infidelity, or moved from one relationship to the next, that is what we know. Their behavior becomes our very own model of what a relationship is supposed to look like and determines what we will expect from our own partners. — Kristen Crockett

It never dawned on us that life is unpredictable, that one day, one of us could suddenly cease to exist and what then? What would be the joy in having left so much unsaid? With what memories would we fill the empty silence? — Isabel Lopez

Rose leaned against the bathroom door. Here it was - her real life, the truth of who she was, barreling down on her like a bus with bad brakes. Here was the truth - she wasn't the kind of person Jim could fall in love with. She wasn't what she'd made herself out to be - a cheerful, uncomplicated girl, a normal girl with a happy, orderly life, a girl who wore pretty shoes and had nothing more pressing on her mind that whether ER was a rerun this week. The truth was in the exercise tape she didn't have time to unwrap, let alone exercise to; the truth was her hairy legs and ugly underwear. Most of all, the truth was her sister, her gorgeous, messed-up, fantastically unhappy and astoundingly irresponsible sister. — Jennifer Weiner

When I watch my kids, and I see the primal level at which the sibling relationships are formed, then I completely understand what these unresolved adult sibling problems are based on. You know, 'Mom liked you better' and, 'You got your own room and I didn't.' — Annette Bening

Baby, I bear remnants of you on my body, on my soul. I always have, I always will, gladly. I just want you to know that.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') — Kunal Sen