Siblings Brother Quotes & Sayings

The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews. — Jane Smiley

That dung flop?" Nakita said, her dislike almost visibly dripping into nasty puddles at Amy's designer flats. "Yes, I guess. That doesn't mean I have to like him."
"I know what you mean." Amy faked a heartfelt sigh. "I have a brother too." The girls behind her giggled when she pushed past me to Barnabas. "I'm Amy," she said, smiling as she extended her hand."
"Barnabas," the reaper said as he darted past me to give Nakita a sideways hug to avoid having to shake Amy's hand. "This is Nakita. She's my favorite sister. We're from Norway. — Kim Harrison

He's my brother, my blood. He annoys the hell out of me most of the time, but when it comes right down to it I want to see him graduate from college and have little annoying mini-Alexes and mini-Brittanys running around in the future — Simone Elkeles

We each deal with childhood in different ways. That brothers and sisters can take the same lump of clay that is childhood and use it to shape themselves into unique human beings is a miracle in itself. Despite individual struggles, triumphs, joys and disappointments, someone is made of the same stuff and has been at your side, whether figuratively or literally, from the beginning. Use our brother and sister quote collection to explore this truth and gain compassionate understanding for yourself and your siblings. — Laura Ramirez

Only children can get spoiled. You have to have at least two. Siblings are important. And if we start with two boys, we have to have a girl because brothers should have a sister. But if we start with two girls, we have to go for a boy because sisters should have a brother. I always wanted a brother. A son of my father would have been able to beat the shit out of boyfriends that broke my heart. I wouldn't have had to resort to cookie dough and it would have saved Scott a lot of money in divorce attorneys, seeing as he'd still be in a coma. I stopped — Kristen Ashley

As her brother turned to walk away, she asked with mild exasperation, "Where are you going? Leo, you can't leave when there's so much to be done."
He stopped and glanced back at her with a raised brow. "You've been pouring unsweetened tea down my throat for days. If you have no objection, I'd like to go out for a piss."
She narrowed her eyes. "I can think of at least a dozen polite euphemisms you could have used."
Leo continued on his way. "I don't use euphemisms."
"Or politeness," she said, making him chuckle. — Lisa Kleypas

I do not believe that the accident of birth makes people sisters and brothers. It makes them siblings. Gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood are conditions people have to work at. It's a serious matter. You compromise, you give, you take, you stand firm, and you're relentless ... And it is an investment. Sisterhood means if you happen to be in Burma and I happen to be in San Diego and I'm married to someone who is very jealous and you're married to somebody who is very possessive, if you call me in the middle of the night, I have to come. — Maya Angelou

The thing to know about my brother was that even though he was fifteen, he looked to be about the same age as me. Only, I'm not sure if that was because he looked older or I looked younger. I like to think it was a healthy mixture of both. — John Corey Whaley

I had an older brother, an older sister and a younger brother, and though I look back fondly on my childhood, I think that when you've got four siblings sharing the same resources and a single kids' bathroom, it's going to get a little tense at times. — Jeff Kinney

Because of the earlier loss of the two elder siblings, my brother and I lived a very pampered and protected life. Nursemaids kept constant watch. With my parents busy at dinner parties and social events, we only met them as if for a daily royal audience. — Charles K. Kao

Your relationship with your brother will be, in many ways, the most complex and bewildering of all the interpersonal connections you will form. An older brother is both authority and peer, friend and bitter enemy, partner and rival, and will play these contradictory roles to varying degrees throughout your life. At this point the rivalry is most prominent, owing to the difference in age and the resentment your brother feels toward you monopolizing your mother's attention. Try to remember, in the face of the poor treatment you receive at his hands, that more than a pure desire to cause you harm or pain, this is an effort on his part to win back some of that attention, even if it's only through being scolded and punished. — Ron Currie Jr.

I would tell people some years later that I was raised an only child and so was my brother. — Homer Hickam

Travis's siblings had seen an overdose before and knew the drill. His brother rolled him onto his side. His sister opened his mouth to make sure he wouldn't choke on his tongue, and told Travis to run next door, ask to use the neighbor's phone, and dial 911. — Charles Duhigg

They were all like siblings, Mr. Kapasi thought as they passed a row of date trees. Mr. and Mrs. Das behaved like an older brother and sister, not parents. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Swallowing back her bitterness, Amelia glanced up at her brother and managed a rueful smile. "Thank you, but at this advanced stage of life, I have no ambitions to marry."
Leo surprised her by bending to brush a light kiss on her forehead. His voice was soft and kind. "Be that as it may, I think someday you'll meet a man worth giving up your independence for." He grinned before adding, "Despite your encroaching old age. — Lisa Kleypas

I have three siblings. My sister makes music. My older brother is a classical conductor, and my younger brother is a mixing engineer. — Lisa Loeb

Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it. — Aimee Bender

It's a commonly expressed and rather nice, romantic notion that we are all "sisters" and "brothers."
Let's be real. Fact is, we might be better served to accept that we are all siblings.
Siblings fight, pull each other's hair, steal stuff, and accuse each other indiscriminately.
But siblings also know the undeniable fact that they are the same blood, share the same origins, and are family.
Even when they hate each other.
And that tends to put all things in perspective. — Vera Nazarian

Time would never cure it. Almost half a century later, when she was the only one of the nine Kennedy siblings still living, the author would ask Jean Kennedy Smith about her brother Bobby and his depression over Jack's death. "When did he come out of that?" she repeated, and then said, "I don't think he ever came out of that. — Robert A. Caro

It's been my experience that only children never learn when to keep their fucking traps shut. An older brother would have beat that out of you. — Adrian McKinty

We're still poor," Amelia had told her brother after poring over the solicitor's letter describing the estate and its affairs. "The estate is small, the servants and most of the tenants have left, the house is shabby, and the title is apparently cursed. Which makes the inheritance a white elephant, to say the least. However, we have a distant cousin who may arguably be in line before you - we can try to throw it all off on him. There is a possibility that our great-great-great-grandfather may not have been legitimate issue, which would allow us to apply for forfeiture of the title on the grounds of - "
"I'll take the title," Leo had said decisively.
"Because you don't believe in curses any more than I do?"
"Because I'm already so damned cursed, another one won't matter. — Lisa Kleypas

There's a truly unbelievable story in the paper today, that a young brother and sister ... have been turned down for adoption by their own grandparents ... If that weren't enough, the siblings are now to be adopted by two complete strangers against the wishes of the grandparents ... And as if that weren't enough, the two strangers are a gay couple, who have been selected ahead of several heterosexual couples. — Andrea Leadsom

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

My family were very poor. I am one of nine siblings: two girls and seven boys. Only my brother and I play in Europe, and then three more work in Europe, and another plays in Tunisia. This family is a footballing family, but our lives have not always been good. — Yaya Toure

Jake eyed his brother. "I never forget. All data is stored in my memory banks. And one day, candy pig, you will pay."
"You 're such a geek."
"Thesbo."
"That's Jack's latest insult."
Seth gestured with his wine-glass. "A play on thespian, since Kev's into that."
"Rhymes with lesbo," Jake explained helpfully while Anna stifled a groan. "It's a slick way of calling him a girl. — Nora Roberts

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

I should have felt proud, but instead I felt awful. That I had let him down so many times, that I had been a horrible brother. That he loved me anyway. That maybe he knew more about life than I did, even if I'd had more experience. Because knowing about life is really about knowing how it should be, not just how it is. — David Levithan

She waited until Jeremy's footsteps receded. "I didn't know you had a brother."
"Now you do." He continued writing.
"Do you have any other siblings?"
"No."
"Parents?"
"I didn't crawl out of Hell, if that's what you are asking. — Anne Mallory

But being a brother or a sister (if you are lucky enough) is the role of a lifetime. — Holly Goldberg Sloan

I had a really wonderful upbringing. We were a tight family. It was wonderful to grow up with so many siblings. We were all just a year or two apart, and we were always so supportive of each other. I learned everything from my older brother and sister and taught it to my younger sisters. — Joaquin Phoenix

He found in the time he was able to spend with Tom - by phone once a month and what became after a time an annual visit to Sydney in midwinter, and then, as his reputation grew and he travelled to Sydney more frequently - that special closeness that siblings sometimes have. It was an ease of company that allows for most things to be unsaid, for awkwardness and error to be entirely unimportant, and for that strange sense of a mysterious shared soul to be expressed through the most trivial of small talk. If beyond their blood relation they had almost nothing in common, Dorrigo Evans still increasingly felt with Tom that he was but one aspect of a larger thing, of which his brother was another, different but complementary part, and their meetings were not so much an assertion of self as a welcome dissolution of it in each other. — Richard Flanagan

At the snowy summit of all these things, however, is the fact that you simply cannot go about locking your siblings in towers when they misbehave. It is unseemly and betrays a sad lack of creativity. — Catherynne M Valente

We're always looking for the best people that apply and have showed interest about being on the [Big Brother] show. In the past, other houseguests' siblings have approached us or applied, and in some cases it works out like Elissa [Reilly Slater] and in some cases it doesn't. We want to make sure we have the best people ultimately. — Allison Grodner

How rarely these few years, as work keeps up aloof,
Or fares, or one thing or another,
How we had days to spend under our parents' roof;
Myself, my sister, and my brother.
All five of us will die; to reckon from the past
This flesh and blood is unforgiving.
What's hard is that just one of us will be the last
To bear it all and go on living. — Vikram Seth

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother ... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too. — Anna Quindlen

Five years behind me, but somehow with his shit together. — David Levithan

My youngest brother killed a lynx yesterday," Rose said.
"Apparently it came into his territory and left some spray marks. He skinned it, smeared himself in its blood, and put its pelt on his shoulders like a cape. And that's how he came dressed for breakfast."
Cerise drank some beer. "My sister kills small animals and hangs their
corpses on a tree, because she thinks she is a monster and she's convinced
we'll eventually banish her from the house. They're her rations. Just in case."
Rose blinked. "I see. I think we're going to get along just fine, don't you?"
"I think so, yes. — Ilona Andrews

I used to pray you know, pray to God that He would somehow stop it. All the nights of listening to my mother scream and things breaking. Of holding my brother and sister and listening to them cry and begging me to stop it.'
My voice is slow and steady like a freight train at night.
'I was too young, and we were always told that they'd put us in foster homes where people would rape us if we ever said anything. So we explained away the bruises and my mom wore big sunglasses whenever she left the house. And we invented car accidents if the bruising was too bad to cover with make-up. — Emily Andrews

It was an eerie feeling, which is why Violet and Sunny were surprised when Klaus broke the silence by laughing suddenly.
"What are you snickering at?" Violet asked.
"I just realized something," Klaus said. "We're going to the administrative building without an appointment. We'll have to eat our meals without silverware."
"There's nothing funny about that!" Violet said. "What if they serve oatmeal for breakfast? We'll have to scoop it up with our hands."
"Oot," Sunny said, which meant "Trust me, it's not that difficult," and at that the Baudelaire sisters joined their brother in laughter. It was not funny, of course, that Nero enforced such terrible punishments, but the idea of eating oatmeal with their hands gave all three siblings the giggles.
"Or fried eggs!" Violet said. "What if they serve runny fried eggs?"
"Or pancakes, covered in syrup!" Klaus said.
"Soup!" Sunny shrieked, and they all broke out in laughter again. — Lemony Snicket

Once she even successfully argued on behalf of my older brother, Dan, getting a BBGun, a weapon which he promptly turned against his younger siblings, outfitting us in helmet and leather jacket and instructing us to run across Eaton Park while he practiced his marksmanship. Today he is a colonel in the army and the rest of us are gun-shy. — Thomas Lynch

New Labour leader Ed Miliband announces plan to 'make this party slightly less unelectable by 2015'. He added: 'I am Ed, the Almighty One.'
Defeated brother David Miliband overheard muttering: 'Now I know how Wayne Christ felt after little Jesus came along. — Andy Zaltzman

You're such a good person, Slade.
No, I'm not. If I were, I never would have developed feelings for my brother's woman. Most brothers can bring their girlfriends home without their siblings falling in love with them. If I were religious, that'd be a cardinal rule or something - not coveting thy brother's wife. Yeah, well - I broke that one. — Nancy Glynn

Did every step feel like the running leap a bird takes before flight? — Jesmyn Ward

She looked up at him, wondering when it was that this man, her brother, had become so wise. If he'd yelled one more word, spent one more minute speaking to her in that mocking voice, she would have broke. She would have broke, or she would have hardened, but either way, something between them would have been ruined.
But here he was, Anthony of all people, who was arrogant and proud and every inch the arch nobleman he'd been born to be, kneeling at her side, placing his hand on hers, and speaking with a kindness that nearly broke her heart. — Julia Quinn

But on the flip side, you'd make an awesome brother. I've been outnumbered by female siblings for too long. — Elaine Levine

Beginning to feel that her brother was being rather too harsh on Lillian Bowman, Livia frowned. "She's a very pretty girl, Marcus."
"A pretty facade isn't enough to make up for the flaws in her character."
"Which are?"
Marcus made a faint scoffing sound, as if Miss Bowman's faults were too obvious to require enumeration. "She's manipulative."
"So are you, dear," Livia murmured.
He ignored that. "She's domineering."
"As are you."
"She's arrogant."
"Also you," Livia said brightly.
Marcus glowered at her. "I thought we were discussing Miss Bowman's faults, not mine."
"But you seem to have so much in common," Livia protested, rather too innocently. — Lisa Kleypas

One final time I told myself I wasn't abducting my little brother. — Marcus Sedgwick

I want to kiss my brother for being so tactful. Rabbit looks grateful as well, and I can only imagine what it would be like to trot out your embarrassing 'enjo kosai' problem in front of your sister, your former love-interest of a couple of weeks, and her two siblings. — Elle Lothlorien

Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words brother and sisters, and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning. — Frederick Douglass

Not only had my brother disappeared, but
and bear with me here
a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from them on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could be told but not shared. — John Corey Whaley

If you want to see something funny, it's a tough hood sticking his tongue out at his big brother. — S.E. Hinton

This is exactly what I meant by unfair, Abe. If I woulda brought a guy home and announced, 'He's staying with me in my room,' both you and Hank would've trussed him up and dragged him off Lawson land."

"Not the same thing, Celia."

Her gray eyes narrowed. "Why? Because you both have dicks? Or because you both are dicks? — Lorelei James

Gunner Ainslie made a face at his sister-in-law. "'Amateur' is a bit rough, Alice. I took a degree in archaeology, after all."
She looked even more confused. "Then why are you a photographer now instead of an archaeologist?"
"Because he didn't want to be a burden to the estate like all my other siblings," his brother Elliott, the current Baron Ainslie, answered, giving his wife a squeeze. "Or so he said. Frankly, I think it was a cover so he could take pictures of unclothed women. — Katie MacAlister

And at other times when Kellyanne held out Pobby and Dingan were real I would just sit there saying, "Are not. Are not. Are not," until she got bored of saying, "Are. Are. Are," and went running out screaming with her hands over her ears.
And many times I've wanted to kill Pobby and Dingan, I don't mind saying it. — Ben Rice

After a minute I leaned back, elbows on the table, and looked up for the twinkle of the first star in the evening sky. When we were little, it was a ritual Finn and I did on the front porch. He'd make his wish silently, and I would too, but I never could keep a secret; and I'd tell him what I wished every time. He'd always tell me it wouldn't come true, but I didn't believe him. I'd had plenty of them come true, from a new box of crayons showing up out of nowhere to a bag of candy left on my bed. It had been a while, though, and the only thing I'd wish for now was impossible. I found the first star in a patch of burnt-orange sky, above the crinkly purple mountains in the distance, and then I wished my brother back anyway. — Jessi Kirby

Bett didn't have any siblings because she said her father had preserved what was dead for too long to be able to create life. When Bet was younger and had begged for one, her father gave her a marmot he' stuffed for a man from Wyoming.
"This is your brother Christopher," he'd said, placing the marmot on Bett's pillow one night. "He doesn't talk much, so you'll have to pick up the slack there. — Rebecca Rasmussen

Aliena's brother, Richard, sometimes reminded her of her father, with a look or a gesture, and that was when she felt a surge of affection. — Ken Follett

Clary curled up on the ground seeing in front of her not the shell of a destroyed town but the eyes of the brother and the sister that she would never have. — Cassandra Clare

I saw it all," Skye continued. "You should've seen the things your brother was doing to her." Deenie felt something crack and twist at her temple. "What? What did you say?"
"Your brother going down on your Lise. Lise's leg twitching like a dog's." Deenie felt her neck stiffen to wood, her hand leaping to it. She couldn't stop it, or Skye. Why Skye would say
"She seemed to love it," Skye said, jaw out, her lips white. "She didn't care who saw. Your brother didn't either."
"You shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about. It wasn't my brother," Deenie said. "Stop saying that. It wasn't him. — Megan Abbott

People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two loves, but this, too, was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel
before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him; it was as if he had always been. Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slightly noticeable buckteeth. He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away. — Zadie Smith

Dear my older brother,
I understand you love me, that you care for your little sister. I remember you beat up a bully once on the bus, and how you kept that frightening image of youself for the sake of my safety. I remember how ever since we were young and I cried, you would go out of your way to make me calm down.When you found out who I liked, you would secretly interrogate their older siblings to figure out what this guy was like.
But you don't need to worry anymore. That was almost a decade ago. You're an adult now. I'm not yours to baby anymore, because soon I'll be an adult too.
Love,
Your little sister — Emily Trunko

Your siblings are the only people in the world who know what it's like to have been brought up the way you were. — Betsy Z. Cohen

Marrying cousins was astoundingly common into the nineteenth century, and nowhere is this better illustrated than with the Darwins and their cousins the Wedgwoods (of pottery fame). Charles married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood, daughter of his beloved Uncle Josiah. Darwin's sister Caroline, meanwhile, married Josiah Wedgwood III, Emma's brother and the Darwin siblings' joint first cousin. Another of Emma's brothers, Henry, married not a Darwin but a first cousin from another branch of his own Wedgwood family, adding another strand to the family's wondrously convoluted genetics. Finally, Charles Langton, who was not related to either family, first married Charlotte Wedgwood, another daughter of Josiah and cousin of Charles, and then upon Charlotte's death married Darwin's sister Emily, thus becoming, it seems, his sister-in-law's sister-in-law's husband and raising the possibility that any children of the union would be their own first cousins. — Bill Bryson

It was two years ago that I first met Yuki. I remember that painfully thin figure covered in dirt: malnourished, exhausted and carrying a sleeping child in his arms like it's the most precious thing in the world. — Kyuugou

who knows you better than your own brother? — Karen Joy Fowler

I want to hold his hand, but I know he will shake it free. His eyes are too full of guilt to really see me, to see his reflection in my eyes, the reflection of my hero, the brother who tried always to protect me the best he could. He will never think that he did enough, and he will never understand that I do not think he should have done more. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Mandy was thinking back to when she was five years old, when she, her parents and Jud went outside before Christmas and had a snowball fight with the gray snow of Sydney Mines. "This is a wicked blast," Jud would say, and Mandy would snap photos with a 35mm disposable film camera, photos she wished very much she could step into sometimes. — Rebecca McNutt

Do you have any other siblings?" I asked.
"Yeah," he answered.
"What? A sister? Brother? Two? Twelve?" I pressed.
"Another brother," he answered.
Good God. There were three Italian, Cuban, Puerto Rican male Delgados roaming the earth. How did I not know this? As a woman, I should have instinctually felt their presence. — Kristen Ashley

I swear, Oliver, when did you become such a stick-in-the-mud?"
"I've always been a stick-in-the-mud." Her brother cast her a thin smile. "I just hid it beneath all the debauchery."
She sniffed. "I wish you'd hide it again. It's quite annoying. — Sabrina Jeffries

All my siblings became artists. One's a novelist, my brother is a painter, my sister was a costume designer. — Caio Fonseca

I liked having some time to myself. Our family was such a close one, you could get smothered. Of course, we didn't always agree with one another. Sometimes I quarreled with my brother and sisters, but I couldn't remember hating anyone for more than five minutes. — Gloria Whelan

I tried to show him things, but he didn't seem to study what I showed him. Usually, he just put whatever I handed him in his mouth. He would try to eat anything. I fed him Tabasco sauce and he yelled. Having a little brother helped me learn to relate to other people. Being a little brother, Snort learned to watch what he put in his mouth. — John Elder Robison

Her hands flew to her mouth. 'Are we even twins?'
Josh rested his hand on her shoulder and brought his forehead to rest against hers, strands of their blond hair mingling. 'I will always be your brother, Sophie. I will always look after you. — Michael Scott

Hysterical laughter. Why did he keep hearing hysterical laughter? Fearghus opened one eye to stare at his two siblings. The were practically falling over each other they were laughing so hard. They woke him up from a sound sleep for this? "What?"
His current mood wouldn't allow for this. And definitely wouldn't allow for him. Gwenvael choked out an answer. "She braided your hair, brother."
"Like a horse's mane," his sister added. — G.A. Aiken

If you intend to drink yourself to death," Amelia had told Leo calmly, "I wish you would do it at a more affordable place."
"But I'm a viscount now," Leo had replied nonchalantly. "I have to do it with style, or what will people say?"
"That you were a wastrel and a fool, and the title might just as well have gone to a monkey?"
That had elicited a grin from her handsome brother. "I'm sure that comparison is quite unfair to the monkey. — Lisa Kleypas