Quotes & Sayings About What Makes A Family

My dad takes most of the pictures in our family, and he makes scrapbooks. This means he gets to figure out what's important for us to remember...
I guess my mom could make a scrapbook, but she doesn't. And I could do it and so could my brothers, but then we would need extra pictures. Plus we're just kids and we don't have time for that.
I know the scrapbooks we'd make would be different from Dad's.
But the person who does the work gets to write the history. — Holly Goldberg Sloan

I really don't know what makes a comedian. I think it's a family background and environment. Yet if you put the same ingredients in another person, he may never utter a funny line. — Bob Newhart

Do yourself and your family a favor: Decide right now that you will write a self-help book someday. I'm serious. A self-help book is a great way to capture what you think makes a good person, a good life and a good world. It's also a "forever document" that you can pass down to future generations. We need more people sharing positive messages and books with the world. Why not be one of those people? — Brendon Burchard

I suppose men, even myself, are perpetually boys. The sons of parents who provide the staples of what makes up a life - a home, an example of what it means to be human, however fucked up that may be. We are molded by impressions and an example, single days that stick out, and wounds that split us open and never close. We take on other people's pain and sometimes make them ours. — M. Spio

My family's story isn't special. What's special is the America that makes our story possible. Ours is a nation like no other, a place where great journeys can be made in a single generation. No matter who you are or where you come from, the path is always forward. — Julian Castro

Without a doubt, priority No. 1 is always my family. Whether it's my children or my husband or even my girlfriends who are also my family, I put them first no matter what. And it makes it easy to then juggle everything else because it's never a question. — Vanessa Lachey

No one likes a braggart, and to praise your children is to curse them with misfortune, but we admit it, if only in secret, if only to ourselves: We are proud, we are so proud of them. We've given them all we can, but our greatest gift has been to imprint upon them our own ordinariness. They may begrudge us, may think us unambitious and narrow-minded, but someday they will realize that what makes them unremarkable is what kept them alive. — Anthony Marra

I think every child deserves a family as loving and committed as mine. Because the sense of family comes from the commitment we make to each other to work through the hard times so we can enjoy the good ones. It comes from the love that binds us; that's what makes a family. My family is just as real as yours. — Zach Wahls

To me, this seems tragic. And this is not an isolated case. In my work, the volume discarded by younger sisters is always greater than the volume discarded by older sisters, a phenomenon surely related to the fact that younger children are often accustomed to wearing hand-me-downs. There are two reasons why younger sisters tend to collect clothes they don't really like. One is that it's hard to get rid of something received from family. The other is that they don't really know what they like, which makes it hard to decide whether they should part with it. Because they receive so much clothing from others, they don't really need to shop and therefore they have less opportunity to develop the instinct for what really inspires joy. — Marie Kondo

Let's treat each other well, making more space for every sort of ragamuffin. We needn't mistake unity with uniformity; we can have the first without the second. The breadth of God's family is mercifully wide. Grace has no discernment, apparently. Jesus created a motley crew, plucking us from every context and inaugurating a piecemeal clan that has only ever functioned with mercy. We should be grabbing hands, throwing our heads back, and laughing that God saved us all, because surely this is the messiest family ever and He loves us anyway. Our shared redemption should keep us grateful and kind, because what other response even makes sense? May the world see a thankful, committed family who loves their God, adores their Savior, and can't get enough of one another. This is a story that saves, a story that heals, and the right story to tell. — Jen Hatmaker

The start of the New Year is a perfect time to start a stop doing list and to make this the cornerstone of your New Year resolutions, be it for your company, your family or yourself. It also is a perfect time to clarify your three circles, mirroring at a personal level the three questions ... 1) What are you deeply passionate about? 2) What are you are genetically encoded for - what activities do you feel just "made to do"? 3) What makes economic sense - what can you make a living at? — James C. Collins

We may live in concrete nests piled on top of each other, we may file in and out of our planes and freeways in neat lines, but we are making it all up as we go along. An ant is born into a complex chemical environment where every small instruction had been laid down in advance. Mother tells the workers what to do and they do everything for the greater good of their enormous family.
In contrast, every human being is capable of working for the advancement of their own procreating, their own minuscule families. Yet we somehow recognize the value of a larger form of society, and readily respond to a larger world beyond our own narrow self-interests. With our unique creative capacity, we have modified ourselves as we have modified our physical conditions, and we have developed an extraordinary division of labor. You and I may be as different as night and day, but that is our strength, and it is precisely this diversification that makes my time in Africa so intensely satisfying. — Craig Packer

My family likes to make fun of me, indicating that being able to cook is part of what makes a woman a woman. I disagree. Getting my period makes me a woman. Cooking just makes me bored. — Sarah Colonna

POPPY: 25 December 2016

POPPY (standing up to Paul): You see family life as respecting boundaries and saying what makes people happy and treating everyone like they're treasured but only in a sanitized way.

I see family life as invading everyone's privacy and saying whatever I feel and treating everyone as they're treasured because they're my family and thus special as compared to the rest of the world.

I see a good family as loud and frantic and intrusive...He fits me, and I don't want to change. Not for you or anyone. I'm deeply in love with myself, and Emmett respects that...

"I'm not her (Christine). I don't have a dream to fix animal boo-boos. Loving Emmett and living close to my family are the only dreams I see as worth having. — Bijou Hunter

Most killers have pretty average lifestyles. Steady jobs too. Sometimes they're even living the family life-white picket fence and a four-door sedan. That's what makes them so scary. They act human and they slot into society and since a young age they've known how to hide the crazy; they put it up on a shelf and only bring it out on special occasions. — Paul Cleave

At the end of the day, Esperanza stepped into Myron's office, sat down, and said, "I don't know much about family values or what makes a happy family. I don't know the best way to raise a kid or what you have to do to make him happy and well adjusted, whatever the hell 'well adjusted' means. I don't know if it's best to be an only child or have lots of siblings or be raised by two parents or a single parent or a gay couple or a lesbian couple or an overweight albino. But I know one thing." Myron looked up at her and waited. "No child could ever be harmed by having you in his life." Esperanza — Harlan Coben

It doesn't matter what the income level of your family is, or if English is the first or second language. It makes no difference. The bottom line is that every child can be an academic champion, an academic champion and a superstar in academics. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Everything makes you who you are, so I was lucky that I had a good family that was horrified by what I wanted to do but was also supportive of it, right to the very end. — John Waters

When there's something that impacts a family member or friend, that is difficult for them, you want to do what you can to help. Sometimes you can't do anything and it makes you feel like you're helpless, so those emotions cross a big barometer, but they're a big, broad stroke when it comes to someone who you care about. If you have compassion in your heart, you just care. — Queen Latifah

What is home? My favorite definition is "a safe place," a place where one is free from attack, a place where one experiences secure relationships and affirmation. It's a place where people share and understand each other. Its relationships are nurturing. The people in it do not need to be perfect; instead, they need to be honest, loving, supportive, recognizing a common humanity that makes all of us vulnerable. — Gladys M. Hunt

You have a real family , and if you think any of us would've chosen this world over those things - wouldn't have given up our loops and longevity and peculiar powers long ago for even a taste of what you have - then you really are living in a fantasy world. It makes me absolutely ill to think you might throw that all away - and for what?"
"For you, you idiot! I love you! — Ransom Riggs

I think you are looking at sexuality and not attributes, and I think it's odd because the conservative mantra is a meritocracy. And I think what you're suggesting is the fact that being gay parents makes you not as good as others. And I would suggest that a loving, gay family with a financially secure background beats the hell out of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline any day of the week. — Jon Stewart

It isn't things and proximity, or even blood that holds us all together. What makes a family is love and loyalty. — Genevieve Dewey

A culture is much more than politics. It is a national identity encompassing education, fine and popular arts and entertainment, science, physical and mental health, leisure activities, friend and family relationships, values, ambitions. . .everything that constitutes the basic shared core values of any country. In our case, the core value of individualism has been the common denominator linking all other aspects of our cultural distinctiveness; it is what makes The United States "America." Viable only where Liberty reigns, valuing the sovereignty of individuals is precisely what makes America exceptional; therefore, it is the culture that warrants attention because the actual, underlying disease invading the mental health of our country has arisen not from the government directly but from the injection of deleterious ideas into our entire individualistic social-economic system. Proposals — Alexandra York

Let the government not be an instructor but a parent who loves and adjusts to the needs of the nation, But remember a parent does what makes things look good to the entire family without segregation. — Auliq Ice

Sticking with your family is what makes it a family. — Mitch Albom

Picture a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy. — Allan Bloom

This has nothing to do with Marten. You and I would be unequally yoked." He blinked, his confusion apparent. "My faith is what makes me who I am," she said in a shaky voice. "Religion is important to me, and I couldn't be married to a man who did not share that fundamental belief. You would grow to resent my devotion - " "I said you could teach Pieter the Bible," he said tightly. "It's not enough. You would eventually resent the way I lean on my faith. Even now, I can see you getting annoyed, as though if you glower enough it will shake me from this position. And I don't want to be the only spiritual leader in a family. I would want my husband to help, to back me, and I will resent it if you can't do that. — Elizabeth Camden

Oh my, I've just discovered what science shows us about our humble but spectacular place in the universe, and I have to say: it is thrilling and mind-boggling beyond all imaginings! It makes the Bible so puny and uninspired, and certainly less poetic, by comparison. I'm terribly sorry. I sincerely misunderstood so much. I almost wish there were a God so I could be punished for all the suffering I have obliviously caused in the world. But since there will be no cosmic punishment for me, I will spend what time I have left working in a family planning clinic in Latin America. Good day. — Julia Sweeney

My family absolutely comes first, and I don't mean that in a Pollyanna way. It's the focus of my life because it's what makes me happy. — Tracy Pollan

A man with a talent does what is expected of him, makes his way, constructs, is an engineer, a composer, a builder of bridges. It's the natural order of things that he construct objects outside himself and his family. The woman who does so is aberrant. We have to expiate for this cursed talent someone handed out to us, by mistake, in the black mystery of genetics. — May Sarton

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

What makes a good animated movie is being able to balance adult and knowing in-jokes and also just out and out funny things that make all people laugh. The idea that it's actually something that will appeal to a family, that's the trick. — Benedict Cumberbatch

No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back. — Jodi Picoult

This is what makes me crazy in this family, Dad. I don't care that you hit us. I really don't. That's over and there's nothing any of us can do about it. But I can't stand it when I state a simple fact about this family's history and I'm told by you or Mom that it didn't happen. But you've got to know, Dad, and I'm saying this as a son who loves you, that you were a shit to your kids. Not all the time. Not every day. Not every month. But we never knew what would set you off. We never knew when your temper would explode and we'd have the strongest shrimper on the river knocking us around the house. So we learned to be afraid without making a sound. And Mom was a loyal wife to you, Dad. She would never let us tell a soul that you were hitting us. Most of the time, she was like you and would simply tell us it didn't happen the way we remembered it. — Pat Conroy

You can't live life without consequences. They occur regardless of the decision. A consequence is an outcome, good or bad. You can live life without regrets and thats what makes it worth it. Or you could live with regret and end up hanging yourself but thats still good. You paid for the rope so your feeding someones family. Something to be proud of before you kick the bucket — George Orwell

Black as an 8 year old kid all the way til we were 18 was beaten in the place that was supposed to be "home". He never complained or fought to stop it because it somehow... made things better for the rest of his family. I can never understand his tolerance to all that he's been through. He keeps trying and fighting without realising it himself when he opened up to me when I put myself in his shoes... and actually felt what he was feeling, I almost became scarred forever because of it. And even then he was the one who pulled me back from that dark place. I can say the best thing there is to say I am able to make him see things from a different point of voice but he's always been the one... that makes us smile in the end. He's been this strong at heart for both of us for so long. — Dee Juusan

The scholars who research happiness suggest that more money stops making people happier at a family income of around seventy-five thousand dollars a year. After that, what economists call "diminishing marginal returns" sets in. If your family makes seventy-five thousand and your neighbor makes a hundred thousand, that extra twenty-five thousand a year means that your neighbor can drive a nicer car and go out to eat slightly more often. But it doesn't make your neighbor happier than you, or better equipped to do the thousands of small and large things that make for being a good parent. — Malcolm Gladwell

In one family, all goes by two and two. If a member of it has any interest, he or she will confide it to some one other; but the rest know nothing. In another family, all feel what touches one; nothing is kept dark from the father and mother, brothers and sisters
all share. This family habit is by far the better, it strengthens the tie between the members, and makes the home one home. — Charles Buxton

Not everybody who marries in the church and has a family the old-fashioned way is unhappy." "No, but some are. And even if it's just hit-and-miss . . . even if anybody can fall through the cracks, it's still not what I thought I was buying into at all. It still all feels like it makes no sense. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I am who I am because of the people who influenced me growing up, and many of them were gay. No one has any right to tell anyone what makes a family — Drew Barrymore

But as I aged I realized that I did it every day. My schoolmates and neighbors, my family members, my best friend and the boy I had a crush on, they all changed on a day-to-day basis. People changing skin became so normal to me that I no longer felt like change was horrifying. It was good to change what you were into something better. I even wanted that for myself.
Like androids, we humans change our bodies. Often, we do it so much that some of us are more machine than human, really? What makes me more worthy of experiencing a blue sky with voluptuous clouds than Meems? She has value. She's more valuable to society than I am at this point. Yet I still enjoy an aspect of society that she does not. — A.L. Davroe

Literature is a way in which we can learn to live deeper lives
husband with wife, parent with child, brother with sister, fellow member with fellow member. Most good authors are better than we are. They are much better company than our own friends.
What comes from good company? What comes from good company is better manners, greater sensitivity, greater sensibility, greater empathy, great sympathy. Reading good literature makes us more capable of understanding other people, of loving other people, those whom we don't particularly want to love, even our enemies, as well as those closest to us. How can we expect to have full marriages when we are not going into those marriages with full minds and fine sensibilities? We are ignoring the tremendous possibilities of a delicate, well-poised, rich, sensitive life if we ignore the literature of the past. There is no substitute. — Arthur Henry King

Cancer stops you in your tracks. It really makes you think about what's important. In a second, life can change. Don't ever forget to say thank you for love and family. What good is your success without them? — Jaclyn Smith

For our family, the entire structure of our life, our home, our business relationships - the entire purpose is for everyone to be able to create in a way that makes them happy. Fame is almost an inconsequential by-product of what we're really trying to accomplish. We are trying to put great things into the world, we're trying to have fun, and we're trying to become the greatest versions of ourselves in the process of doing things we love. — Will Smith

But what does he do to qualify as a sonovabitch?" Jenny asked.
"Make me", I replied.
"Beg pardon?"
"Make me", I repeated.
Her eyes widened like saucers. "You mean like incest?" she asked.
"Don't give me your family problems, Jen. I have enough of my own."
"Like what, Oliver?" she asked, "like just what is it he makes you do?"
"The 'right things'", I said.
"What's wrong with the 'right things'?" she asked, delighting in the apparent paradox. — Erich Segal

I think we're always in the process of writing and rewriting the story of our lives, forming our experiences into a narrative that makes sense. Much of that work involves demythologizing family myths and cultural myths - getting free of what we have been told about ourselves. — Sam Keen

When I write, I go to live inside the book. By which I mean, mentally I can experience everything I'm writing about. I can see it, hear its sounds, feel its heat or rain. The characters become better known to me than the closest family or friends. This makes the writing-down part very simple most of the time. I only need to describe what's already there in front of me. That said, it won't be a surprise if I add that the imagined worlds quickly become entangled with the so-called reality of this one.
Since I write almost every day, and I think (and dream) constantly about my work, it occurs to me I must spend more time in all these places than here. — Tanith Lee

How did Ixtel become real for me? The world is full of Ixtels who I can help without hurting my father. Why this one? How was it her suffering that touched me? Father. I feel connected to her through my father's actions. I feel an obligation to right my father's wrong. But why? Shouldn't my father's welfare come first? His welfare is my welfare. How does one weigh love for a parent against the urge to help someone in need? I feel like what is right should be done no matter what. This lack of doubt makes me feel inhuman. But it is not a question of my head for once. I hear the right note. I recognize the wrong note. Maybe the right action is a lake like this one, green and quiet and deep. — Francisco X Stork

When something scary like this happens, it acts like a wake-up call, you know? It makes us reassess what's important in life. Our family. Our friends. The people we love. — R.J. Palacio

You don't know what it's like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life, not about her children or the world, who was always suspicious, always tearing you down and splitting your dreams straight down the seams. When my first pen pal, Tomoko, stopped writing me after three letters she was the one who laughed: You think someone's going to lose life writing to you? Of course I cried; I was eight and I had already planned that Tomoko and her family would adopt me. My mother of course saw clean into the marrow of those dreams, and laughed. I wouldn't write to you either, she said. She was that kind of mother: who makes you doubt yourself, who would wipe you out if you let her. But I'm not going to pretend either. For a long time I let her say what she wanted about me, and what was worse, for a long time I believed her. — Junot Diaz

What makes a family is neither the absence of tragedy nor the ability to hide from misfortune, but the courage to overcome it and, from that broken past, write a new beginning. — Steve Pemberton

When we allow material things to be more important than spiritual things, we lost a lot of very important ways in life, many fear dying and are so concerned about what they do if someone stole all their position, did we not come into this world naked? can we take all our riches with us when we pass? is success what really makes a man or women hear? can we actually buy real love? the twisted ways of thinking come from greedy people, a person who work hard should be paid more than one who work less but that's not the case here, it is all backwards this is what a man has brought forth because of the attitude that being certainly religion or family tree entitles them to it what they really forget is what we are from the same family — Wisdom

I'm pretty well. So's the family, and so's the boys, except for a sort of rash as is a running through the school, and rather puts 'em off their feed. But it's a ill wind as blows no good to nobody; that's what I always say when them lads has a wisitation. A wisitation, sir, is the lot of mortality. Mortality itself, sir, is a wisitation. The world is chock full of wisitations; and if a boy repines at a wisitation and makes you uncomfortable with his noise, he must have his head punched. That's going according to the Scripter, that is. — Charles Dickens

Bruce decides to spend the family fortune on capes and crime labs and to fritter away his free time fighting crazy criminals.
Now that's an out-of-the-box calling. What sort of person makes a life change like that without radical submission?
Without that submission, without an understanding that there is something greater out there, the principles of the comic villain look far more reasonable. — Paul Asay

Whatever is being investigated, created or produced now, in movies or TV, needs to consider the context in which it is being distributed. It's not a vacuum. There are certain universal themes of love, conflict, loyalty or family that are everlasting and that need to be presented in a way that makes it feel relevant, even if it's a period piece. You need to consider what context that film, that story and those characters are being seen in. — J.J. Abrams

I think we all live in a world that is so fast-paced, it's threatening and absolutely saturated with change and novelty and insecurity. Therefore, the ritual of cooking and feeding my family and friends, whoever drops in, is what makes me feel that I'm in a universe that is contained. — Nigella Lawson

Our family makes us who we are, defines us totally. When you go to a therapist or have analysis, whatever reason you go in for, they will always bring you back to your family. We're strong or weak according to what family we have. You might have left them long ago, might not even talk to them, but something lingers; we have no choice. — Sandrine Bonnaire

I wonder if what makes a family a family isn't doing everything right all the time but, instead, giving a second chance to the people you love who do things wrong. — Jodi Picoult

Most writers cannot afford focus groups or A/B testing, but they can ask a roommate or colleague or family member to read what they wrote and comment on it. Your reviewers needn't even be a representative sample of your intended audience. Often it's enough that they are not you. This does not mean you should implement every last suggestion they offer. Each commentator has a curse of knowledge of his own, together with hobbyhorses, blind spots, and axes to grind, and the writer cannot pander to all of them. Many academic articles contain bewildering non sequiturs and digressions that the authors stuck in at the insistence of an anonymous reviewer who had the power to reject it from the journal if they didn't comply. Good prose is never written by a committee. A writer should revise in response to a comment when it comes from more than one reader or when it makes sense to the writer herself. — Steven Pinker

I'm just a girl from Flatbush, Bo. There's nothing special here.""You're so wrong.""I know what people think. To friends and family I'm sweet and helpless. To guys I'm a body.""Your body is spectacular. I'm not going to pretend I don't see that. But I can have any body. You've lit something inside me. And it's you, not your assets.""You don't know me. We've hardly scratched the surface.""That's why I need time. I want to know your story, your dreams, your longings. Every part I see makes me want more." He was speaking her own desire to understand him, because his real self called to her more strongly than anyone she'd known , even people she'd known for years. — Kristen Heitzmann

Even though you weren't born to us, you grew in our hearts. We will be forever connected because love is what makes a family. — Deanna Kahler

Looking back, I see that I write books about brothers and sisters, about what makes up a family, what works and what is nurturing. — Patricia MacLachlan

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is Isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. And you may drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others. — Chetan Bhagat

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

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.

He crouched at the care window and looked in. "What a lovely family you have. What a charming family. They're all lovely. Except for that one." His finger jabbed the glass. "That one's a bit ugly."
The American stepped towards him. "What? What did you say?"
"Oh, don't worry. I'm sure his personality makes up for his face. — Derek Landy

My husband's family is military. Preparation is just, from that family perspective, it's just a part of what makes sense to do. You buy insurance for your house; you have a go bag. — Sarah Wayne Callies

Blood doesn't make someone family. Love is what makes a family. — Nichole Chase

Soon we're both frowning hard at the paperwork. "Middle name?" Noah says. "Does Gideon even have a middle name?"
"I don't know"
Noah turns to me and says, "Do you have a middle name?" his glare implying that, if I do, this whole thing is somehow my fault.
"I ... have no idea."
"Primary language spoken at home." Noah makes a face. "What does this mean? Our primary language? Gideon's? That's sort of why we're here ... "
"Um, it's under family, so I'm guessing ours?"
"Well ... " Noah lowers his pen. The paperwork has defeated him. "What's our primary language?"
"English? ASL? Physical affection?"
"Food?" Noah says.
"Food's a good guess."
He picks up the pen. "I'm writing food, comma passive aggressive."
"Good call. — Hannah Moskowitz

It's a shame watching life shrivel up into nothing. Makes you remember to appreciate what you've got. Anybody can tell you Ed started breaking the day Emma died. — John Northcutt Young

In the museums we used to visit on family vacations when I was a kid, I used to love those rooms which displayed collections of minerals in a kind of closet or chamber which would, at the push of a button, darken. Then ultraviolet lights would begin to glow and the minerals would seem to come alive, new colors, new possibilities, and architectures revealed. Plain stones became fantastic, "futuristic ... " Of course there wasn't any black light in the center of the earth, in the caves where they were quarried; how strange that these stones should have to be brought here, bathed with this unnatural light in order for their transcendent characters to emerge. Irradiation revealed a secret aspect of the world.
Imagine illness as this light; demanding, torturous, punitive, it nonetheless reveals more of what things are. A certain glow of being appears. I think this is what is meant when we speculate that death is what makes love possible. — Mark Doty

The fabric of North Carolina and what makes our state so special is our families and our common desire for a brighter future for our children. No matter what your family looks like, we all want the same thing for our families - happiness, health, prosperity, a bright future for our children and grandchildren. — Kay Hagan

What makes a good deli is a place that, one, is generally family-owned or owned by individuals that care. Delis that are owned by large corporations tend not to have that same soul. And two, delis that make as much of their food from scratch as possible. — David Sax

A woman will not understand what true dependency is until she is cradling her own infant in her arms; nor will she likely achieve the self-confidence she craves until she has withstood, and transcended, the weight of responsibility a family places upon her
a weight that makes all the paperwork and assignments of her in-basket seem feather-light. — Danielle Crittenden

When a person tries to obey the unconscious, he will often, as we have seen, be unable to do just as he pleases. But equally he will often be unable to do what other people want him to do. It often happens, for instance, that he must separate from his group-from his family, his partner, or other personal connections-in order to find himself. That is why it is sometimes said that attending to the unconscious makes people antisocial and egocentric. As a rule this is not true, for there is a little-known factor that enters into this attitude: the collective (or, we could even say, social) aspect of the Self. — C. G. Jung

What you do that makes you happy and that makes your family, the people that love you, their opinion counts more than anybody out there that is putting a category on you or defining you according to the old phantasmal. — Angelique Kidjo

They're her parent," Neal finally spoke out. "Regardless of what they've done, they're still her parents. Yes, she remembers the bad, but she will always remember the good as well, however short it was. It's not as easy to kill family as everyone makes it seem."
"This moment of wisdom was brought to you by - " I was cut off as a water bottle came flying at my head. I caught it and laughed.
"He's right though," our father replied. "We can't just keep killing everyone ... especially our in-laws."
True, we were running out of places to hide the bodies. I snickered at the thought. — J.J. McAvoy

Doreen Fernandez' foreword to "Rizal Without the Overcoat":
His essays remind us that history need not and should not be relegated to schoolbooks and classrooms, where it often becomes a set of names and dates to memorize and spew out on test papers. History is a living and lively account of what we were and are; it could and should be as real to each of us as stories about family or about recent and past events.. If all of that makes us understand humanity better, so does history make us understand ourselves, and our country infinitely better, in the context of our culture and our society. — Ambeth R. Ocampo

Yes. What is it, guilt, revenge, love, what?"
I swallowed. "I live alone."
"And your point is?"
"You have the Pack. You're surrounded by people who would fall over themselves for the pleasure of your company. I have no one. My parents are dead, my entire family is gone. I have no friends. Except Jim, and that's more of a working relationship than anything else. I have no lover. I can't even have a pet, because I'm not at the house often enough to keep it from starving. When I come crawling home, bleeding and filthy and exhausted, the house is dark and empty. Nobody keeps the porch light on for me. Nobody hugs me and says, 'Hey, I'm glad you made it. I'm glad you're okay. I was worried.' Nobody cares if I live or die. Nobody makes me coffee, nobody holds me before I go to bed, nobody fixes my medicine when I'm sick. I'm by myself. — Ilona Andrews

Now, when I assert that Islam is not a religion of peace I do not mean that Islamic belief makes Muslims naturally violent. This is manifestly not the case: there are many millions of peaceful Muslims in the world. What I do say is that the call to violence and the justification for it are explicitly stated in the sacred texts of Islam. Moreover, this theologically sanctioned violence is there to be activated by any number of offenses, including but not limited to apostasy, adultery, blasphemy, and even something as vague as threats to family honor or to the honor of Islam itself. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Growing up as a black kid with a white father who loves you, who affirms you, who was part of your life is fundamentally different than what black people in my family were subjected to in the 19th century or the 18th century. But unfortunately, it doesn't change the old racial order. I think we need to let the old racial order just stay where it is and not seek to improve upon it. Not try to create more racial categories, because all that does is it makes a race stick around longer. — Benjamin Jealous

What makes a good family? Well, I suppose obviously love. Love lubricated often I think by humor. I think a family that can laugh at each other and tease themselves and who are able to be jolly with each other I think is the key. — Stephen Fry