Staying Far From Family Quotes & Sayings

Though I work in New York City, in an office about a mile from the World Trade Center, I was not in New York City when the planes struck. I was on a plane above the Atlantic Ocean, heading back to New York from a family reunion and celebration in Europe. I had said good-bye to my husband in London; he was staying for a wedding of a business friend. I couldn't wait to see my kids and my parents, who would be waiting for me at a Little League game in our town, about thirty-five miles from New York City. An hour and a half into the flight, I suddenly had the feeling that the plane was making a slow turn. Nobody else seemed to notice. I sat nervously, hoping I was imagining it. But then a stewardess made an announcement. "There has been a catastrophic event affecting all of North American airspace," she said. "We are returning — Lauren Tarshis

You called?" Sounding casual is difficult when it feels like you're heart's river-dancing in your rib cage.
"Yes. I just wondered where you were. You didn't answer your cell. Is everything okay?" She sighs, but I can't tell if it's in relief or parental aggravation.
"Everything's fine. My battery is dead, but Galen bought me a charger to keep over here, so it's charging."
"How sweet of him," she says, knowing good and well she instructed him to do so. "Well, just wanted to check in. Should I wait up for you? I don't appreciate you missing curfew the last few nights. Technically, staying over there until four in the morning is a coed sleepover, which I don't allow, or had you forgotten? Your trip to Florida with Galen's family was a special circumstance."
"I stayed the night at Chloe's all the time with JJ there." JJ is Chloe's eight-year-old brother. Not a great comeback, but it will have to do. — Anna Banks

Hannah, as if she understood her place in the cosmos, grew from quiet infant to watchful child: a child fond of nooks and corners, who curled up in closets, behind sofas, under dangling tablecloths, staying out of sight as well as out of mind, to ensure the terrain of the family did not change. — Celeste Ng

Firequencher raised his hand. I've been staying out of family conversations. Do I get credit for that? — Orson Scott Card

I've said about a million times that the best thing a young photographer can do is to stay close to home. Start with your friends and family, the people who will put up with you. Discover what it means to be close to your work, to be intimate with a subject. Measure the difference between that and working with someone you don't know as much about. Of course there are many good photographs that have nothing to do with staying close to home, and I guess what I'm really saying is that you should take pictures of something that has meaning for you — Annie Leibovitz

A country is mostly the people in it," Maud said. "I don't love England. My parents died a long time ago, and my brother has disowned me. I love Germany. For me, Germany is my wonderful husband, Walter; my misguided son, Erik; my alarmingly capable daughter, Carla; our maid, Ada, and her disabled son; my friend Monika and her family; my journalistic colleagues . . . I'm staying, to fight the Nazis. — Ken Follett

If you cannot work on the marriage or the women is a moron, staying married and cheating makes the most sense because divorce is disruptive to the family life and your bank account. — Al Goldstein

You can just stay in oblivion, going through your days and your life and your experiences, staying with your friends, family. If that suits you, it's good. But for some people, it's not enough. — Frederick Lenz

There isn't a lot of work in Australia. I think that's why everyone comes over to America to find jobs and pilots and things, because there's not enough work to justify staying there, unfortunately. Like, I wish there was. I would love to stay home and be working with my family around the corner, but the work just isn't there. — Phoebe Tonkin

There are times when I'm super-overwhelmed, and everything feels like it's hitting me in the face at once, but I think what's keeping me calm, and who I am by staying true to myself, is my whole family being so supportive and keeping me grounded. They treat me the exact same way they treated me years and years ago. — Shawn Mendes

People want to think that staying in shape costs a lot of money. They couldn't be more wrong. It doesn't cost anything to walk. And it's probably a lot cheaper to go to the corner store and buy vegetables than take a family out for fast food. — Florence Griffith Joyner

I think I am staying in Toronto. It keeps me grounded and I can be with my family and friends. — Dakota Goyo

My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I'm willing and I'm eager, and not just about my writing - I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be. — Wayne Dyer

Don't count on me to take you in because I'm angry. I'm angry at you for leading us on such a song and dance all these years, not just these few years but all the years, skipping all those holidays and staying away from beach trips and missing Mom and Dad's thirtieth anniversary and their thirty-fifth and Jeannie's baby and not attending my wedding that time or even sending a card or calling to wish me well. But most of all Denny, most of all: I will never forgive you for consuming every last little drop of our parents' attention and leaving nothing for the rest of us. — Anne Tyler

Within the hierarchy of fabrications that compose our lives - families, countries, gods - the self incontestably ranks highest. Just below the self is the family, which has proven itself more durable than national or ethnic affiliations, with these in turn outranking god-figures for their staying power. So any progress toward the salvation of humankind will probably begin from the bottom - when our gods have been devalued to the status of refrigerator magnets or lawn ornaments. Following the death rattle of deities, it would appear that nations or ethnic communities are next in line for the boneyard. Only after fealty to countries, gods, and families has been shucked off can we even think about coming to grips with the least endangered of fabrications - the self. — Thomas Ligotti

In our family health, it's about having a balanced life, about laughing and staying on a positive note. — Victoria Osteen

Sophie clutched Grant tighter. 'I don't know what screwed-up messages from your family are floating around in your head right now, but you're staying right here. — Jennifer Lane

Does the Chinese national behind the Ban Mian counter, who holds a two-year work permit, appreciate the National Day songs that he has been listening to day in and day out for the past few months? I have a feeling that he is homesick to the bones and longs to be reunited with his family and loved ones back in Heilongjiang. He cannot wait for his son to grow up so that he himself can return to the peace and tranquility of his beloved village. In the meantime, he will bear the hardship and loneliness of staying in a foreign land. — Jim Tan

Ex-slaves, in large part, shared a different economic vision. They were "always on the move," searching for family, denying their labor to "dishonest or oppressive employers," and asserting their independence through their mobility. Rather than staying in place, working as much as possible for a high a wage as possible, and thus possibly accumulating a greater array of material good, a large number of freedpeople sought not to maximize income but to minimize the amount of "time spent at work on other people's behalf. — Elsa Barkley Brown

I'm serious, Harry, don't go. But Harry only had one thought in his head, which was to get back in front of the mirror, and Ron wasn't going to stop him.
That third night he found his way more quickly than before. He was walking so fast he knew he was making more noise than was wise, but he didn't meet anyone.
And there were his mother and father smiling at him again, and one of his grandfathers nodding happily. Harry sank down to sit on the floor in front of the mirror. There was nothing to stop him from staying here all night with his family. Nothing at all. — J.K. Rowling

I suddenly remember how different I am from most of the kids here. Nobody would have to drag me or my brothers to the Bahamas; we'd swim there if we could. For us, a family vacation is staying at a local hotel with a swimming pool for a weekend. — Angie Thomas

[Clayton] Christensen had seen dozens of companies falter by going for immediate payoffs rather than long-term growth, and he saw people do the same thing. In three hours at work, you could get something substantial accomplished, and if you failed to accomplish it you felt the pain right away. If you spent three hours at home with your family, it felt like you hadn't done a thing, and if you skipped it nothing happened. So you spent more and more time at the office, on high-margin, quick-yield tasks, and you even believed that you were staying away from home for the sake of your family. He had seen many people tell themselves that they could divide their lives into stages, spending the first part pushing forward their careers, and imagining that at some future point they would spend time with their families
only to find that by then their families were gone. — Larissa MacFarquhar

Inspiring passion in family and friends has more enduring value than just staying alive for them. — Alex Lowe

He believed a man should never be sober but never be drunk. And he believed in watching out for family, even if you had to stay sober for a few hours; it was that important. — Allan Dare Pearce

But [he] had lost god, and all his family and friends were staying behind with his imaginary friend. A silly dream goes away and takes with it your whole real life. — Penn Jillette

Your connection to other people keeps you human, and that connection, staying human - that's what you have against control. It's like if somebody is being controlled by their job, the connection is to their family. And if they stay connected to those people, the job will never really have control over them. — Gerard Way

When I came back from filming 'Abduction', I told my agent: I'm staying in London now. If it takes doing children's theater from the back of a van in Kilburn, that's OK. I need to be with my family. My job is to keep the family together and provide for them. — Jason Isaacs

I live in a sort of insular world. It's mostly my family, my house, staying home and working. — Mark Hamill

I also realized that in my family drama a very limited number of character traits were available to the players. In my mind, either I could be weak, wimpy, submissive, and pathetic, or I could be a raging tyrant and bully who demanded total compliance from everyone in my realm. The notion of being strong and assertive while staying calm, insisting on appropriate boundraries and on being treated with respect and dignity, were not in my realm of experience. Once I realized that I was much happier with the person I was in the rest of my life, I realized it was foolish not to be that "me" around my family as well. I began to feel liberated and genuinely felt they could take the new me or leave it. So far, they've chosen to leave it, but I feel a sense of integrity and self-respect that I had never experienced before. — Mark Sichel

Your friends and your family, if you're close to them, they won't let you get too far from who you were or from who you are. And so I love staying close to people who've always known me. That's probably the best leavening that you could possibly have. — Condoleezza Rice

I don't like staying in hotels. I like to be in my own bed. San Diego as a city is really awesome. The only hard part of it for me is that I'm away from my family and my house. But as far as shooting down there, we get amazing locations, and the crew is really, really stellar down there. They are really fun. — Kristen Bell

I'd like to find great roles close to home and work on great projects while staying near my family. My family's the most important thing to me right now. — Harry Hamlin

When I did that '3 Days of Normal' one, we had no budget, and we were all staying in a house in New Hampshire. There's no trailers, and it's just a family environment. There's not much of a crew; you just do what you need to do. — Mircea Monroe

That's one of the problems with doing anything for a long time. Staying home, for instance. The longer you stay, the more you believe your identity is wrapped up in the people and things around you. You become trapped. It seems as if you fear change because you can't let go of this illusion of yourself as being what? The good granddaughter? The girlfriend who can't choose between her boyfriend and her family? Seems as if your fear of change is really just the same fear of death you mention in your first class. — Suzanne Morrison

For some people, staying grounded means doing yoga. For others, it's spending time with family. Social media, too, can be a lifesaver. — Ryan Holmes

Our marriage, like many others, has had its ups and its downs. It took a lot of work and a whole lot of therapy to get to a place where I could forgive Anthony. It was not an easy choice in any way. But I made the decision that it was worth staying in this marriage. That was a decision I made for me, for our son and for our family. — Huma Abedin

I had made a vow to never stay in my home state to play, I wanted to go as far East Coast as possible, more or less to get away from my family life. I ended up staying in my home state and fell in love with it. I ended up having a beautiful relationship with my family over time and it was the best decision I've ever made. — Hope Solo

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