What Family Quotes & Sayings

You should never fall in love with your own press clippings, because it is very much the nature of the beast that the same journalists who build you up between Monday and Friday tear you down for weekend fun ... My family's habit of living in the past seems to me pathological, even dangerous. If all greatness lies in the past, what is the point of the future? — Stephen L. Carter

We could be like a father determined to provide everything for his family. He devotes every energy to that end and succeeds; only then does he discover that what they needed most, to be together as a family, has been neglected. And he reaps sorrow in place of contentment. — Boyd K. Packer

For instance, some evangelicals have turned Proverbs 31 into a woman's job description instead of what it actually is: the blessing and affirmation of valor for the lives of women, memorized by Jewish husbands for the purpose of honoring their wives at the family table. It is meant as a celebration for the everyday moments of valor for everyday women, not as an impossible exhausting standard. — Sarah Bessey

I tend to deal with characters who are sort of at that same point of wrestling with, 'Who am I going to be as an adult? What do I believe? How am I defining myself in the context of my culture and my peer groups, my family?' — G. Willow Wilson

What the restored gospel brings to the discussion on marriage and family is so large and so relevant that it cannot be overstated: we make the subject eternal! — L. Tom Perry

Claim whatever you want. Say you only want a happy family or a successful career or a big house. I say: no, that's not what you want. You'll settle for those things, but you really want a monkey that does your evil bidding. Pullman is a genius just for this. — Maureen Johnson

I've never forgotten what it's like to be in your early twenties, which is not a particularly easy time. You've left your family, you've left the strictures of high school, and you're trying to break free and form yourself but you have to support yourself as well. We don't really give enough credence to that time of life and to its troubles. — Julia Leigh

That's a hard one because right now it seems that all I'm watching is Teletoons and Nickelodeon. You know what I love? I love Criminal Minds. I love CSI. Those are my kind of shows. I also love Modern Family ... MasterChef, I'm huge into that. I'm a big Gordon Ramsay fan ... I don't get a whole lot of time to watch anything but, if I can, those are some of the ones that I do tend to watch. — Teryl Rothery

He resisted for a while and there were some legal boundaries, you know, keeping me from being near him or his family, but in the end, love overcame. And I got what I wanted. I always get what I want ... — Kristen Schaal

I'm a pretty forgetful guy, but everything she says, I remember. I remember what colour her hair ribbon was when we met on the first day of fifth grade. I remember that she loves orchids because they look delicate but aren't, really. From a single postcard she sent me when traveling with her family two summers ago. I remember what my name looks like in her handwriting. — Adi Alsaid

Growing up in Ireland, when my family received important news, good or bad, we would boil water and make tea. It was the first thing I did when my father died in 1984. This ritual allowed me a moment to take in the enormity of what had happened. — Roma Downey

Fear of living without a map is the main reason people are so insistent that we tell them what to do. The reasons are pretty obvious: If it's someone else's map, it's not your fault if it doesn't work out. If you've memorized the sales script I gave you and you don't make the sale, who's in trouble now? Not only does the map insulate us from responsibility, but it's also a social talisman. We can tell our friends and family that we've found a good map, a safe map, a map worthy of respect. — Seth Godin

What we are now witnessing in the 21st century is the fracture or complete breakdown of families, societies, and governments as a result of centuries of dehumanization that have taken a toll. More natural disasters (tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, etc.) merely uncover the reality of the national disasters we have created by granting sanctuary to dehumanization via the law. — Liza Lugo

So what? You act all mysterious to seem more interesting?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're always wandering off or running away," he said. "But you're a lot more
interesting when you're just being yourself you know. When you're actually here."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Emma said coldly. "Where else would I be?"

"You know what I mean," he said, a rough edge to his voice. "It's like you're so busy trying not to act like your family that you've never even stopped to consider that it might not be such a bad thing."

"Well what about you?" she shot back, aware of the bitterness in her words.
"You complain about your dad not wanting you around, and then you complain when he wants you to stay home for school. You can't have it both wars."

"Well neither can you," he said. " You can't keep everyone at arms length and then expect them to be there for you when you need them. — Jennifer E. Smith

The orange turns to dull bronze light and continues to show what it has shown all day long, but now it seems to show it without enthusiasm. Across those dry hills, within those little houses in the distance are people who've been there all day long, going about the business of the day, who now find nothing unusual or different in this strange darkening landscape, as we do. If we were to come upon them early in the day they might be curious about us and what we're here for. but now in the evening they'd just resent our presence. The workday is over. It's time for supper and family and relaxation and turning inward at home. We ride unnoticed down this empty highway through this strange country I've never seen before, and now a heavy feeling of isolation and loneliness becomes dominant and my spirits wane with the sun. — Robert M. Pirsig

Nevertheless, unless you can prove that you have at least one close Wizarding relative, you are now deemed to have obtained your magical power illegally and must suffer the punishment."
Ron glanced at Hermione, then said, "What if purebloods and half-bloods swear a Muggle-born's part of their family? I'll tell everyone Hermione's my cousin--"
Hermione covered Ron's hand with hers and squeezed it.
"Thank you, Ron, but I couldn't let you--"
"You won't have a choice," said Ron fiercely, gripping her hand back. "I'll teach you my family tree so you can answer questions on it."
Hermione gave a shaky laugh.
"Ron, as we're on the run with Harry Potter, the most wanted person in the country, I don't think it matters. If I was going back to school it would be different. — J.K. Rowling

In Italy, especially in '70s and '80s, there was a lot of racism between north and south. And my mom immigrated from the south to the north, from Puglia, the heel of Italy. But what made me feel different was society, not my family. — Riccardo Tisci

That's what the family is for,' he said. 'Calvin says it is the Providence of God that we look after those nearest to us. So it is the will of God that we help our brothers, and it is equally the will of God that we accept their help and receive the blessing of it. As if it came from the Lord Himself. Which it does. So I want you boys to promise me that you will help each other. — Marilynne Robinson

The very best thing you can be in life is a teacher, provided you are crazy in love with what you teach, and that your classes consist of eighteen students or fewer. Classes of eighteen students or fewer are a family, and feel and act like one. — Kurt Vonnegut

All of us remember the home of our childhood. Interestingly, our thoughts do not dwell on whether the house was large or small, the neighborhood fashionable or downtrodden. Rather, we delight in the experiences we shared as a family. The home is the laboratory of our lives, and what we learn there largely determines what we do when we leave there. — Thomas S. Monson

Why is it so important to have fun? Because if you love your work (or your activism or your family time), then you'll want to do more of it. You'll think about it before you go to sleep and as soon as you wake up; your mind is always in gear. When you're that engaged, you'll run circles around other people even if they are more naturally talented. From what we've seen personally, the best predictor of success among young economists and journalists is whether they absolutely love what they do. If they approach their job like - well, a job - they aren't likely to thrive. But if they've somehow convinced themselves that running regressions or interviewing strangers is the funnest thing in the world, you know they have a shot. — Steven D. Levitt

After living in Smokey Hollow these three months my bearded face was darkened to a tan, and for more than a moment, I couldn't tell what color I was. Black is what I saw and what I expected to see. I grabbed a towel and rubbed to get a clear look. No, I was white. At least my skin was. I had been through so much with my family here, and all I had seen was black faces, that I forgot for a split second that I wasn't black too. For weeks after the flood in the bathroom, I remembered the morning I forgot my skin color. — Peter Jenkins

It was the least I could do after what you did for us," Gregori said. Mikhail graciously thanked each of the Lycan hunters for their help. Vikirnoff and Natalya along with Destiny and Nicolae immediately came over. Destiny had fought with the Lycans and she introduced her lifemate, his brother and Natalya as she led the other pack members over to the tables of food and drink. Fen knew immediately that Mikhail had planned for just that move. The pack respected Destiny's abilities and would relate to her and her family. Out of the corner of his eye he could see other Carpathian couples going up and introducing themselves to the pack members and engaging them in conversation. Mikhail inclined his head toward Fen. "I believe you two know one another." "We've certainly fought a few battles together now," Zev said, holding out his hand to Fen. — Christine Feehan

The problem with the evangelical homeschool movement was not their desire to educate their children at home, or in private religious schools, but the evangelical impulse to "protect" children from ideas that might lead them to "question" and to keep them cloistered in what amounted to a series of one-family gated communities. — Frank Schaeffer

My most treasured possessions are not things; they are only things, my friends, family and animals are what counts. — John The Apostle

That's what a real family does, right? You're accepted no matter what. You're included every time you show up. That's how it should be. — Jennifer Ryan

Because you're the one. Because I've never felt for anyone what I feel for you. I want a lifetime with you, Abigail. I want a home with you, family with you. I want to make children with you, raise them with you. If you truly don't want any of that with me, I'll give you the best I've got, and hope you change your mind. I just need you to tell me you don't want it. — Nora Roberts

He is my brother," I said. "I cannot desert him."
"You can go to your own death," William said. "Or you can survive this, bring up your children, and guard Anne's little girl who will be shamed and bastardized and motherless by the end of this week. You can wait out this reign and see what comes next. See what the future holds for the Princess Elizabeth, defend our son Henry against those who will want to set him up as the king's heir or even worse-flaunt him as a pretender. You owe it to your children to protect them. — Philippa Gregory

I'm right here," he said. "Dad's right here. I'm going nowhere. Just gonna wait until you're ready to come out into the world, and then your mom and I are going to take care of you. So you hang tight, we
clear? Do your thing, and we'll wait for however long it takes."
With his free hand, he took Layla's palm, and put it over his own.
"Your family is right here. Waiting for you ... and we love you."
It was totally stupid to talk to what was, no doubt, nothing but a bundle of cells. But he couldn't help
it. The words, the actions ... they were at once totally his, and yet coming from a place that was foreign to him.
Felt right, though.
Felt ... like what a father was supposed to do. — J.R. Ward

There is a core value I wanted to illuminate: No matter what kind of family you have - straight, gay, married, single parent, separated, no kids, two kids, 20 kids, whatever - we all go through the human comedy. But if the bonds are strong enough, and the desire is there, you can get to the other side, still together and still a family. — Lisa Cholodenko

Horacio paused to pour himself another glass of brandy. "Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you, Prudencia? You can't build yourself a world made to measure, but you can build a village. In a way, all of us here belong to a club of refugees. Your employer is one of the few inhabitants with family roots in San Ireneo. He came back a few years ago and set it all up. You may not know it, but his father's family has lived here for centuries." Miss — Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

Where are the ethical concerns, that so many people called animal lovers invoke, when you steal the children of wild dog mothers and other family members from right before their eyes? Do ethics always refer only to what people think appropriate for purely subjective reasons?
Ultimately, our long-term research resulted in a very sad picture: With the exception of the random puppy, who today as an adult actually is interested in people, neither male Maccia nor the most of the other "rescued" dogs are socially and environmentally secure, but had remained shy and partly vegetate in kennels with empty eyes. Such dogs are neither fish nor fowl, although taken from the wild population in the early age of about eight to twelve weeks (except Maccia, whom Funny "rescued" at the age of four months, which is even more irresponsible). — Gunther Bloch

My Mother

My mother was not educated but she was the best teacher I've ever had in my entire life. She had what it's called natural wisdom, bless her precious soul. Here some of her teachings: Human Values:
Love: Learn to love because everything that's based on love has a deep rooted foundation.
Kindness: Be kind all the time but never let anyone take advantage of your kindness.
Peace: Learn to have peace with yourself when the world turns against you because it starts with you.
Honesty: Be honest to yourself and then to the others.
Respect: Respect others and they will respect you.
Openness: Be always transparent especially when you are hurting. Never pretend that it's all okay.
Loyalty: Always be loyal to your family and make sure your family comes before anything else.
She taught me to learn to compose myself when life gets tough and unfair to me.

I love you mama & Happy Mothers Day — Euginia Herlihy

Procuring the house in Ballister was a desperate bid for respect, for recognition, the ultimate gesture (or sacrifice, as it turned out) that would prove him a worthy successor to the Flo and Walter Prices of the world.
To my mind, the Culver was Norm's way home, the only way he knew. It was an ever-evolving means to an ever-evolving end that eventually ended him. Who or what led Norm down that thorny path - devotion, economic pressures, family cynicism, Beth's insatiable appetite - has been a topic of endless debate. You can believe what you want to believe. Personally, I don't think any rational argument under the sun would have deterred Beth's "messiah" from his mission. If the Ballister acquisition was Norm's cross, as everyone seems to think it was, then it was Norm who chose to bear that cross. And pride that nailed him to it. — Ted Gargiulo

I live completely without regret. Sure there are plenty of things that someone could second guess, but I see the path of life like driving down the road without a map. The thing is, some dark alleys open up in majestic places, and some bright and shiny highways to the top end in cliffs to the bottom. You never know until you get there. What I know for sure is that if many years ago I actually had a map to the path of life, the destination that I would have chosen is right here, with this family, in this place, and with these smiles. That makes anything that could have been regretful, the best decision in the world. — Michael A. Wood Jr.

Oh maturity's a wrapped up package deal so it seems
And ditching teenage fantasy means ditching all your dreams
All your friends and peers and family solemnly tell you you will
Have to grow up be an adult yeah be bored and unfulfilled
Oh when no ones yet explained to me exactly what's so great
About slaving 50 years away on something that you hate, about meekly shuffling down the path of mediocrity
Well if that's your road then take it but it's not the road for me. — Frank Turner

Every family has a story that it tells itself, that it passes on to the children and grandchildren. The story grows over the years, mutates, some parts are sharpened, others dropped, and there is often debate about what really happened. But even with these different sides of the same story, there is still agreement that this is the family story. And in the absence of other narratives, it becomes the flagpole that the family hangs its identity from. — A.M. Homes

If you die to everything you know,including your family,yourmemory,everything you have felt,then death is a purification,a rejuvenating process;then death brings innocence and it is only the innocent who are passionate, not the people who believe or who want to find out what happens after death. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

You know what family values means, that's hating the same people your grandfather hated. — Robert Anton Wilson

For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.'
Really,' I said.
We're passive-aggressive people,' she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. 'Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now, for instance, I'm not speaking to two of my sisters and one brother ... At mine [my house], silence is golden. And common.'
To me,' Reggie said, picking up a bottle of Vitamin A and moving it thoughtfully from one hand to the other, 'family is, like, the wellspring of human energy. The place where all life begins.' ...
Harriet considered this as she took a sip of coffee. 'Huh,' she said. 'I guess when someone else does something worse. Then you need people on your side, so you make up with one person, jsut as you're getting pissed off at another.'
So it's an endless cycle,' I said.
I guess.' She took another sip. 'Coming together, falling apart. Isn't that what families are all about? — Sarah Dessen

What he had said to me a moment ago was true. I hadn't been listening to him, not for years. I'd wanted him to be better for so long that I had stopped hearing him tell me he was sick. For the first time I saw him now as a man, not a member of a family. A separate person, who had been trying as hard as he could for most of his life simply to get by. — Adam Haslett

And in time, I must meet the same fate. Love, family, accomplishments - they are all torn away, leaving nothing. What is the worth of anything we do? The worth is in the act. Your worth halts when you surrender the will to change and experience life. But options are before you; choose one and dedicate yourself to it. — Christopher Paolini

The most surprising thing to me is what an incredibly intense effort it's been to create a world from the ground up. I had run a show that had already existed and had been created by the show-runner, Meredith [Stiehm]. It's a very different experience to come in at ground zero and meet people and assemble the cast and crew. As a group and as a family, we're creating this world. — Veena Sud

Some of what I am doing when I am researching is looking for things people in my family have done and finding out what those things mean, why they did those things and seeing how I fit into them. — Lisa See

What has become clear to me is that it is not the inherent nature of being gay that causes such a reduced life; it is, rather, the social circumstances around being gay: the perceptions of it and the cultural norms that it is said to violate. As some of those norms have changed, I have been able to be gay, to have a marriage, to have a family, and to have - if there is wood to knock on - a fortunate and happy life. — Andrew Solomon

I love what I do, and I love doing it, and I love getting better at it. I just am not willing to risk ... Much ... to go on to the next level. I don't want to risk my personal sanity or happiness or my family or the love of my life. — Summer Phoenix

I look for someone whose upbringing was somewhat similar to mine because they can understand me - love for the family and everything else. You see someone's relationship with their parents, and you realize what that person's going to be like as a parent. — Maksim Chmerkovskiy

And the American people are the greatest people in the world. What makes America the greatest nation in the world is the heart of the American people: hardworking, innovative, risk-taking, God- loving, family-oriented American people. — Mitt Romney

Chinese Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies? — Maxine Hong Kingston

None of that means my family's not spiritual. (Though what happened to Marvin has put me at odds with God these days.) To their credit, our parents have spent considerable time discussing the difference between Faith - the abiding belief in a Divine Creator that's as plain a part of a hundred-year-old oak tree, or a fiery red sunset, as the nose on your face - and Religion - which is the rigamarole that makes some folks figure they've got a leg up on everybody else. — Susan Carol McCarthy

God loves you as do I and no matter what physical characteristics that differ from each and every one of us, we are but one family under the heavens. — Eric Anthony

Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college. — Noam Chomsky

Benedict sets up a community, a family. And families, the honest among us will admit, are risky places to be if perfection is what y ou are expecting in life. — Joan D. Chittister

It's about that applause I want to speak to you. I want you to remember that when you've done a little dance or a song or sketch, the applause which you get is not only because you yourself have done your best, but because each of those men is seeing in you someone he loves at home, and because of you is able to forget for a little while the unhappiness of not being in his home, and in some cases the great tragedy of not knowing what has happened to the children in his family. — Noel Streatfeild

In what world did you think you could get away with this?" Jalal seethed. "To my cousin? To my family?" His gleaming hilt continued its punishing onslaught. — Renee Ahdieh

Hello? Oh, nothing ... Just sort of hanging around ... My brother? He's right here ... He's reading ... He's always reading ... He has no life of his own, and he's a very boring person so he reads a lot ... What's he reading? I don't know ... She wants to know what you're reading ... "
"How to survive living in the same family with an annoying sister."
"Ivanhoe. — Charles M. Schulz

International war is the sum total of millions of individual wars, raging in the minds of the people, between what is selfish and what is selfless. To the extent that you and I develop selflessness in our own hearts, to that extent we contribute to peace in our family, community, country, and world. — Eknath Easwaran

I've made money doing things I love. DJing was a hobby. When I bought my turntables my mom said, "Oh what now, Taryn?" But it became pretty fruitful right away. I come from a very music-oriented family. — Taryn Manning

soon after, a Friend in company began to talk in support of the slave-trade, and said the negroes were understood to be the offspring of Cain, their blackness being the mark which God set upon him after he murdered Abel his brother; that it was the design of Providence they should be slaves, as a condition proper to the race of so wicked a man as Cain was. Then another spake in support of what had been said. To all which I replied in substance as follows: that Noah and his family were all who survived the flood, according to Scripture; — Various

It never takes longer than a few minutes, when they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That's what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts. — Michael Chabon

All of us face hard choices in our lives. Some face more than their share. We have to decide how to balance the demands of work and family. Caring for a sick child or an aging parent. Figuring out how to pay for college. Finding a good job, and what to do if you lose it. Whether to get married - or stay married. How to give our kids the opportunities they dream about and deserve. Life is about making such choices. Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become. For leaders and nations, they can mean the difference between war and peace, poverty and prosperity. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

After a while, meaning and implication detach themselves from everything. One can be a father and assume no obligations, it follows that one can be a boyfriend and do nothing at all. Pretty soon you can add friend, acquaintance, co-worker, and just about anyone else to the long list of people who seem to be part of your life, though there is no code of conduct that they must adhere to. Pretty soon, it seems unreasonable to be bothered or outraged by much of anything because, well, what did you expect? In a world where the core social unit - the family - is so dispensable, how much can anything else mean? — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Every father is given the opportunity to corrupt his daughter's nature, and the educator, husband, or psychiatrist then has to face the music. For what has been spoiled by the father can only be made good by a father, just as what has been spoiled by the mother can only be repaired by a mother. The disastrous repetition of the family pattern could be described as the psychological original sin, or as the curse of the Atrides running through the generations. — Carl Jung

The notion that women are less aesthetically profound and innovative than men
just not very important, if you know what I mean
doubtless spreads back to our beginnings as upright animals: the males hunted and killed for the family while the females stayed home in the cave and tended the strange little creatures they were giving birth to. — Edward Albee

Motor racing is like one big family, ultimately, and when you come back to it, that's really what it feels like. — Mario Andretti

Don't kill me." the girl cries I shake my head smiling "Of course I wont, I'm after the things that attacked your family." I get up "Lets find you a new place to stay." I gesture to the girl to come, she slowly makes her way to me. Avoiding the bloody mess and what remains of her family, no doubt this is going to stay with her. Attacks like this always did. — Charon Lloyd-Roberts

The need of one human being for the approval of his fellow humans, the need for a certain cult of fellowship - a psychological, almost physiological need for approval of one's thought and action. A force that kept men from going off at unsocial tangents, a force that made for social security and human solidarity, for the working together of the human family.
Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed for that approval. For without it man was on his own, an outcast, an animal that had been driven from the pack.
It had led to terrible things, of course - to mob psychology, to racial persecution, to mass atrocities in the name of patriotism or religion. But likewise it had been the sizing that held the race together, the thing that from the very start had made human society possible.
And Joe didn't have it. Joe didn't give a damn. He didn't care what anyone thought of him. He didn't care whether anyone approved or not. — Clifford D. Simak

I come from a huge family. I am used to taking orders and being told what to do and not having an opinion, but I think that what I've gone through made me really sensitive to other people. — Frances Newton

Television doomed us to the Family, whose household instrument it has become-what the hearth used to be, flanked by the communal kettle. — Roland Barthes

Think of what this planet has done to us. Dune took my Duke and my son and shattered all our hopes and dreams as a family. It swallows people. — Brian Herbert

I play with my grandchildren. I tend to my garden, which I love. Of course, I love to read, and family is really what it's all about. — Julie Andrews

We created Pure Flix to make uplifting and inspiring content on a consistent, ongoing basis, so audiences would truly have an alternative to what Hollywood puts out. Pure Flix produces faith and family films, so the audience is the entire family. — David A.R. White

There has been corruption in the Belgian civil service and at government level for decades. The Royal family do what they can to hold things together, and they don't do a bad job. — Nicholas Royle

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

By sticking to my principles and what I firmly believe in - I always have my own attitude towards everything in life. I wish to create trends rather than follow them. My daily routine at the moment is really just a combination of work and family. — Li Bingbing

Family doesn't go one way. It goes every way. We help each other, we protect each other, and we die for each other, if that's what it takes. — David Estes

The New York Times, with what was threatening to become a customary lack of prescience, forecast that it would never be a serious competitor for radio because "people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn't time for it."34 — Bill Bryson

My family is my life, and everything else comes second as far as what's important to me. — Michael Imperioli

There was another reason. The main one."
"Reason?" I said stupidly.
"Why I married you."
"Which was?" I don't know what I expected him to say, perhaps some further revelation of his family's contorted affairs. What he did say was more of a shock, in its way.
"Because I wanted you." He turned from the window to face me. "More than I ever wanted anything in my life," he added softly. — Diana Gabaldon

It was really hard coming to terms with the Nazi history. Then in my twenties I was traveling to Germany. There was a lot of poetry activity and some of my first readings abroad and trying to relate with people my own age there and what they were discovering and learning had to examine in terms of their backgrounds. Then so many of my friends had family who had either perished in the holocaust or survived in the holocaust. It was very palpable. — Anne Waldman

You? Harmless?" Tam snorted.
"What? You don't think I could pull it off?" Aiden accused.
"Well, the fact that you're practically a walking armory had me convinced otherwise. — Claire M. Banschbach

My family was all police and hard hats at the refineries; they didn't know what to think about me. So I became a closet writer. — Robert Crais

My family, you know, are all still, you know, very close. We're all still very close. Mom and Daddy are still alive. So, what more can you ask for? Your kids are healthy. — Reba McEntire

I love him so very much. As Romeo did Jugurtha, as Pyramid did Thirsty, as-"
"Oh, please, no need to elaborate further," interjected Alexia, wincing.
"But what would my family SAY to such a union?"
"They would say that yours hats had leaked into your head," muttered Alexia, unheard under her breath. — Gail Carriger

I look forward to a time when lawyers aren't in the top three calls every day, and all you care about is how your kids are doing in school or what the weather's like and the great day you had with your family. — Lance Armstrong

My family would soon tell me if I was getting above my station. I love what I do, I love my job, but I also like to go home and lead a normal life ... I like to go to the gym, go shopping and do normal things, and it's totally unnecessary to not value people working around you. It's down to good manners, really. — Kerry Ellis

What I did find out because I grew up with a lot of chaos early on: sometimes, you're born into a family, and their norm is already in your red zone of dangerous feeling or feeling too chaotic. You don't get to really do anything about that when you're a kid. — Patricia Arquette

Neither of them knew what it was to be family, to have family, to make a family. They knew cruelty, abuse, abandonment. She wondered if that was why they had come together. They both understood what it was to have nothing, to know fear and hunger and despair- and both had remade themselves. — J.D. Robb

I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organised religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptised. — Lance Armstrong

I would not call my family 'traditional Chinese.' We were more what I would term the Colonial Chinese. — Kevin Kwan

The reason is obvious. You're my grandfather, okay. Like it or not, you're who you are and i'm who i am. And i'm here right now, so what are we going to do about it? -Adam Cayhall- — John Grisham

Human inheritance is both blessing and curse. And in religious inheritance this paradox is acute. For many of us religion is heavy baggage. Stories of love and fear, liberation and constriction, grace and malice come not only from our own experiences, and our family's past, but from an ancestral history within a tradition. What curses do we need to shed, in the process of growing up? What can we hold to, as blessing? — Kathleen Norris

There is, indeed, nothing more vexing than to be, for example, rich, of good family, of decent appearance, fairly well educated, not stupid, rather good-hearted even, and at the same time to possess no talent, no special quality, no eccentricity even, not a single idea of one's own, to be precisely "like everyone else."
One is rich, but not so rich as Rothschild; of a good family, but one which has never distinguished itself in any way; of decent appearance, but an appearance expressive of very little; well educated, but without knowing what to do with that education; one is intelligent, but without one's own ideas; one is good-hearted, but without greatness of soul, and so on and so forth. There are a great number of such people in the world, far more than it appears. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I have a feeling a lot of artists' work got lost [because of AIDS]. Howard was fortunate because his family and friends supported him, but a chilling thing I remember was these guys at St. Vincent's [Hospital] who would call out for someone to listen to them, just for a moment. They were dying alone. Who knows what happened to their work? It's been a process to follow the thread to find out everything Howard did. It's getting over that shock. — Aaron Brookner

Mama always told me, be careful what you do, don't go around breaking young girls hearts. — Michael Jackson

The differences were plain enough, and yet I saw that they were as nothing compared with what we had in common. As I lay in bed at night, the sky outside my window reflecting the city's dim glow, I thought about Abuelita's fierce loyalty to blood. But what really binds people as family? The way they shore themselves up with stories; the way siblings can feud bitterly but still come through for each other; how an untimely death, a child gone before a parent, shakes the very foundations; how the weaker ones, the ones with invisible wounds, are sheltered; how a constant din is medicine against loneliness; and how celebrating the same occasions year after year steels us to the changes they herald. And always food at the center of it all. — Sonia Sotomayor

I didn't know what to think about first: me seeing Claude naked, Claude seeing me naked, or the whole fact that we were related and naked in the same room.
(Sookie Stackhouse, Dead in the Family) — Charlaine Harris

I would like to see ... an entirely different procedure which is that we vote on the budget and decide how much we are going to spend, first, the way any family does, and then fit our priorities into what we think we have to spend. Instead, what we do, is to do it incrementally, starting at the bottom, adding and adding and adding ... Until we get the support of all the authorities in this House to decide, first, what we think this country can afford and then decide where the amount is going to be allocated, we will never have common sense in this House. — Millicent Fenwick

It's cool to have parents and family who will always tell me the truth no matter what. They'll tell me if I'm doing something stupid! — Jordin Sparks

Over and over these organizations tell America that family, above all, is what Christianity is about. Devotion to one's family is, indeed, a wonderful thing. Yet it is hardly something to brag about. For all except the most pathologically self-absorbed, love for one's parents, spouse, and children comes naturally. Jesus did not make it his business to affirm these ties; he didn't have to. Jews feel them, Buddhists feel them, Confucians and Zoroastrians and atheists feel them. Christianity is not about reinforcing such natural bonds and instinctive sentiments. Rather, Christianity is about challenging them and helping us to see all of humankind as our family. It seems clear that if Jesus had wanted to affirm the "traditional family" in the way that Pat Robertson claims, he would not have lived the way he did. — Bruce Bawer