c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
There was our father, the heart we knew held all of us. Held us heavily and desperately, the doors of his heart opening and closing with the rapidity of stops on an instrument, the quiet felt closures, the ghostly fingering, practice and practice and then, incredibly, sound and melody and warmth.
— Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
Spending time with the ones who are dear to you is like being in a dream, is it not?
— Sakura Tsukuba, Land of the Blindfolded, Vol. 3
In family matters you can get over anything. That's one thing you'll learn as an adult. There's a lot you have to learn which is a lot worse than that. You'd never think of forgiving a friend for some of the things your parents did to you. But with friends it's different. Friends aren't the roll of the dice.
— Pat Conroy
I'm not sure if I know any 'functional' families, if functional means a family without difficult times and members who don't have a full range of problems.
— David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
Sure, Nico had mixed emotions about the camp. He’d felt rejected there, out of place, unwanted and unloved … but now that it was on the verge of destruction, he realized how much it meant to him. This was the last place Bianca and he had shared as a home – the only place they’d ever felt safe, even if only temporarily.
— Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus
You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.
— Madeleine L'Engle
Losing your family... it puts fear in a different perspective, Chase had once told me.
— Kristen Simmons, Article 5
I liked having some time to myself. Our family was such a close one, you could get smothered. Of course, we didn't always agree with one another. Sometimes I quarreled with my brother and sisters, but I couldn't remember hating anyone for more than five minutes.
— Gloria Whelan, Summer of the War
The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.
— Fredrik Backman, Beartown
Mothers and their children are in a category all their own. There's no bond so strong in the entire world. No love so instantaneous and forgiving.
— Gail Tsukiyama, Dreaming Water
Cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey.
— Jack Layton
my motheris pure radiance. she is the suni can touchand kissand holdwithout getting burnt.
— Sanober  Khan
I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own. Maybe you would feel lost in the crowd. Or sheltered by it. Whatever the case, one things was for sure: like it or not, you'd never be alone.
— Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.
— Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers
My stepfather, John O'Hara, was the goodest man there was. He was not a man of many words, but of carefully chosen ones. He was the one parent who didn't try to fix me. One night I sat on his lap in his chair by the woodstove, sobbing. He just held me quietly and then asked only, "What does it feel like?" It was the first time I was prompted to articulate it. I thought about it, then said, "I feel homesick." That still feels like the most accurate description - I felt homesick, but I was home.
— Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.
— J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
I do not concern myself with my inability to feel such comfort amidst humans (other than with very few friends and family), but, rather, am simply thankful that at least dogs exist, and I’m humbly aware of how much less a person I’d be – how less a human – if they did not exist. 
— Rick Bass, Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had
Son, there are times a man has to do things he doesn't like to, in order to protect his family.
— Ralph Moody
A family is one of nature's solubles
—  it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.
Relatives share the same bloodline, but FAMILY shares your successes, pains, ambitions, celebrations, failures, values, love and so much more. I realize that many friends have become Family and some relatives just are not. (Analogy: Blood scatters everywhere, when Family runs together...When I thought I needed "Blood" to survive, I realized that what I really needed was "Family"!)
— Gaye Miller 2012
Family's not family unless it's totally messing you up. I'm pretty sure that's the point
— Alexandra Bullen, Wish
It doesn't matter to me. We're still cousins in our own way. Blood's just something old people talk about to make you feel bad.
— Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle
The home is the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose, and that is to support the ultimate career.
— C.S. Lewis
There are many reasons why so many of us choose to share our lives with a pet--it's the perfect antidote for loneliness, providing an endless supply of smiles and the certainty of unwavering companionship, and many of us have seen the way a pet can make a family feel whole.
— Nick Trout, Love Is the Best Medicine: What Two Dogs Taught One Veterinarian about Hope, Humility, and Everyday Miracles
They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
Your typical Six-year-old is a paradoxical little person, and bipolarity is the name of his game.
— Louise Bates Ames
Well,' she said, adjusting a pot lid, 'I have my family of origin, which is you and Mom. And then Jaime's family, my family of marriage. And hopefully, I'll have another family, as well. Our family, that we make. Me and Jaimie.'Now I felt bad, bringing this up so soon after Jamie's gaffe. 'You will,' I said.She turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. 'I hope so. But that's just the thing, right? Family isn't something that's supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They're born, they die. It's always evolving, turning into something else. even that picture of Jamie's family was only the true representation for that one day. But the next , someone had probably changed. It had to.'...Later, when the kitchen had filled up with people looking for more wine, and children chasing Roscoe, I looked across all the chaos at Cora, thinking that of course you would assume our definitions would be similar, since we had come from the same place. But this wasn't actually true. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone's eyes. Our definitions were as different as we were ourselves.
— Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
I didn't know what I wanted to Be...A sense that I had permanently botched things already, embarked on the trip without the map. and it scared me too, that I might end up as a mother of 3 working in a psychiatrist's office, or renting surfboards...I guess I saw their lives as failed somehow, absent of the Big Win...What is fate was an inherited trait? What if luck came through the genetic line, and the ability to "succeed" at your chosen "direction" was handed down, just like the family china? Maybe I was destined to be a weed too.
— Deb Caletti, The Fortunes of Indigo Skye
I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes.
— Toni Morrison
Sometimes, having friends who were like family was a good thing, and sometimes, it was like having an endless supply of very nosy, very irritating siblings.
— Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Taken by Storm
Gratitude means to recognize the good in your life, be thankful for whatever you have, some people may not even have one of those things you consider precious to you (love, family, friends etc). Each day give thanks for the gift of life.You are blessed
— Pablo
Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
— Jane Austen, Emma
Flea stared at us, "I can't decide what's worse. Losing family members or not having a family member to lose.
— Maria V. Snyder, Touch of Power
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, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.
— William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
There's no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.
— Jill Churchill
Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs of all these sorrows and sit on the porch and sing them on mild evenings.
— Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
I wish I worried about my uncle's opinions, and had problems to work out with my mom. Hell, I'd settle for knowing what her voice sounded like." I put a hand on her shoulder. "Trite but true—you don't know what you have until it's gone. People change. The world changes. And sooner or later you lose people you care about. If you don't mind some advice from someone who doesn't know much about families, I can tell you this: Don't take yours for granted. It might feel like all of them will always be there. But they won't.
— Jim Butcher, Blood Rites
Growing up in my family meant ambushes on your birthday, crossbows for Christmas, and games of dodge ball where the balls were occasionally rigged to explode. It also meant learning how to work your way out of a wide variety of death traps. Failure to get loose on your own could lead to missing dinner, or worse, being forced to admit that you missed dinner because your baby sister had tied you to the couch. Again.
— Seanan McGuire, Discount Armageddon
The best way to feel family is being part of it.
— Válgame, Zori 2ª Parte
If we will build righteous traditions in our families, the light of the gospel can grow ever brighter in the lives of our children from generation to generation. We can look forward to that glorious day when we will all be united together as eternal family units to reap the everlasting joy promised by our Eternal Father for His righteous children.
— L. Tom Perry
He didn't think he belonged here, so she was making him face some uncomfortable facts. People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted.
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper
I told myself that some families we get without asking, while others we choose. And I chose those two. I think that’s what you’d call a silver lining.
— Jenny Valentine, Broken Soup
He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.
— Richard Wright, Native Son
And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life.
— Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road
In the future if my mother tries to shame me with her disapproval, I will let her know in no uncertain terms that I reject her and all of her codependent baggage. I am Codependent No More.
— Susan Juby, Alice, I Think
I thought of how proud he was when he took the marks- cutting the skin of his throat in a long slash and then packing it with ashes until keloid scars rose up.He called it his second smile.
— Holly Black, Red Glove
Family. Couldn't live with them, couldn't run a stake through them.
— Chloe Neill, Blood Games
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
— Victor Hugo
These are all I have. I do not have the wide, bright beacon of some solid old lighthouse, guiding ships safely home, past the jaggedrocks. I only have these little glimmers that flicker and then go out.
— Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
But why people need privacy? Why privacy is important? In China, every family live together, grandparents, parents, daughter, son and their relatives too. Eat together and share everything, talk about everything. Privacy make people lonely. Privacy make family fallen apart.
— Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
I’ve never had anorexia, but I know it well. I see it on the street, in the gaunt and sunken face, the boney chest, the spindly arms of an emaciated woman. I’ve come to recognize the flat look of despair, the hopelessness that follows, inevitably, from years of starvation. I think: That could have been [me]. It wasn’t. It’s not.
— Harriet Brown, Brave Girl Eating: A Family's Struggle with Anorexia
Everyone needs a house to live in, but a supportive family is what builds a home.
— Anthony Liccione
It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender in Exile
Yes, she was a scandal.Her brother simply didn’t know it.“I fell in the Serpentine today.”“Yes, well, that doesn’t usually happen to women in London. But it’s not so much of a scandal as it is a challenge.
— Sarah MacLean, Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart
We make families of our own, Travis whispered in my arms on the last night we spent together. It starts with you and me and then it spreads. And whatever happens, there’ll always be a part of me that’s part of you. No matter what.
— Steve Kluger, Almost Like Being in Love
When a family breaks you don't hear the crack of the breaking. You don't hear a sound.
— Judy Blundell, Strings Attached
Makes a diff'rence, havin' a decent family,' he said. 'Me dad was decent. An' your mum an' dad were decent. If they'd lived, life woulda bin diff'rent, eh?''Yeah, I s'pose,' said Harry cautiously. Hagrid seemed to be in a very strange mood.'Family,' said Hagrid gloomily. 'Whatever yeh say, blood's important...
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
I'm tired of being set upon by crazed Christians one minute and unbridled libertines the next. Girls, I'm going camping.
— Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind: And Other Dangers of Southern Living
He felt lighter than he had in weeks, and he realized that the monster he had been running from wasn’t really a monster after all. It was simply that place in the heart that holds the measure of your history, the joy and the grief, the laughter and the tears, the magic and the wonder; all the ingredients that add up to the story of a life well lived.
— Lilli Jolgren Day, The Wonder of Ordinary Magic
In communities, at work, but particularly in families, people are put together in something like a three-legged race. God means us to cross the finish line together, and all the other people tied together with us play some part in our progress. They are oftentimes to rouse our stubborn sins to the surface, where we can deal with them and overcome them. Bundled together in families, a giant seven or nine or fifteen legged pack, we seem to make very poor progress indeed and fall to the ground in bickering heaps with some regularity. But God has put us together - has appointed each person in your bundle specifically for you, and you for them. And so, 'little children, let us love one another' with might and main, and keep hopping together toward the finish line.
— Frederica Mathewes-Green
If the home is a body, the table is the heart, the beating center, the sustainer of life and health.
— Shauna Niequist, Bread and   Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes
It is most difficult, in my mind, to separate any success, whether it bein your profession, your family, or as in my case, in basketball, fromreligion.
— John Wooden
Look forward to the wonderment of growing up, raising a family and driving by the gas station where the popular kids now work.
— Tim Dorsey, Gator A-Go-Go
Life is a big fat gigantic stinking mess, that's the beauty of it, too.
— Gayle Forman, If I Stay
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
— Edmund Burke
i love playing and chatting with children...feeding and putting them to bed with a little story, and being away from the family has troubled me throughout my...life. i like relaxing at the house, reading quietly, taking in the sweet smell that comes from the pots, sitting around a table with the family and taking out my wife and children. when you can no longer enjoy these simple pleasures something valuable is taken away from your life and you feel it in your daily work.
— Nelson Mandela, Conversations With Myself
Sometimes the bridges you burn light the way out of your darkness, but the memory of the blaze will be burned into your heart and mind forever.
— Shannon L. Alder
Didn't you ever have a father yourself? You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.' So I figured it's because I never had a father that I don't want one now. A person can't miss something she never had.
— Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me
The core of any family is what is changeless, what is going to be there──shared vision and values.
— Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
I want you to be happy," I tell him, my eyes searching his. 'I want you to have a family. I want you to be surronded by people who care about you," I say. 'You deserve that.
— Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me
It didn't matter how big our house was
—  it mattered that there was love in it.
If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child.
— Linda Sunshine
Leah looked at her parents, lost in their own fantasies, and decided that the three of them were a pretty pathetic family - but she wasn't sure who was more pathetic: the dateless girl spending the night of the big dance by herself in her bedroom, or the parents who foolishly believed a boy would arrive on their doorstep with flowers, a limo, and a promise to rescue their daughter from her solitude.
— J.M. Reep, Leah
How I love them. How good they are. They endure endless hours of me talking about the future. They keep me near and at the same time bid me farewell. That is what real love is.
— Carole Maso, The Art Lover
My house feels like home when you're there.
— Susan Richards Shreve, You Are the Love of My Life
Making amends is not only saying the words but also being willing to listen to how your behavior caused another’s pain, and then the really hard part…changing behavior.
— David W. Earle
And that is how Goodwin problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room of my life. It was practically our family pet.
— Cecelia Ahern, The Book of Tomorrow
Responsible parenting is NOT a crime. Responsible parenting is most valuable tool of our society.
— Mick Karabegovic
I remember Mum repeatedly telling us we had good hearts and good brains. When she said that we'd say 'thanks' and it might have sounded as if we were thanking her for seeing us that way but actually we were thanking her for giving us whatever goodness was in us.
— Helen Oyeyemi, What is Not Yours is Not Yours
Salvation is a family affair.
— Bruce R. McConkie
While you've been gadding about the countryside, we've held a meeting, and we've all of us decided that you must go.'In short, we've voted you out of the family,' Daffy said. 'It was unanimous.
— Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
The soldier had stamped my passport FAMILY in heavy black capital letters and I checked it now for reassurance and because I liked how fierce the word looked
— Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now
Remember to say "I love you" to family and friends not just your significant other.
— Vianka Van Bokkem, My Handsome Vampire: Falling in Love
And here is the shocking plot twist: as farmers produced those extra calories, the food industry figured out how to get them into the bodies of people who didn't really want to eat 700 more calories a day.
— Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
The most important thing in life is your family. There are days you love them, and others you don't. But, in the end, they're the people you always come home to. Sometimes it's the family you're born into and sometimes it's the one you make for yourself.
— Candice Bergen
How shall I ever learn who I am when there is so much of me that belongs to someone else?
— Madeline Claire Franklin, The Poppet and the Lune
Sometimes, though, you have to do things for family, even if you'd rather not.
— Patricia C. Wrede, Across the Great Barrier
Single parents - both women and men - can play as critical a role as the traditional two-parent family, and gay and lesbian parents can, and do, raise happy, resilient children. When it comes to family life, form is not merely as important as content. Feeling loved and supported, nurtured and safe, is far more critical than the 'package' it comes in.
— Michael S. Kimmel, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
Where I come from, family's defined as those who don't screw you over a paycheck. Blood makes no difference. If you can trust them with your life and know that they'll be there come whatever hell rains down, then they're your family.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Born of Shadows
Tape the sound of the moon fading at dawn. Give it to your mother to listen to when she's in sorrow.
— Yoko Ono
Maybe children just want whatever it is they don't get. And then they grow up and give their children what they wanted, be it silence or information, affection or independence--so that child, in turn, craves something else. With every generation the pendulum swings from opposite to opposite, stillness and peace so elusive.
— Laura Moriarty, The Rest of Her Life
I was also sick of my neighbors, as most Parisians are. I now knew every second of the morning routine of the family upstairs. At 7:00 am alarm goes off, boom, Madame gets out of bed, puts on her deep-sea divers’ boots, and stomps across my ceiling to megaphone the kids awake. The kids drop bags of cannonballs onto the floor, then, apparently dragging several sledgehammers each, stampede into the kitchen. They grab their chunks of baguette and go and sit in front of the TV, which is always showing a cartoon about people who do nothing but scream at each other and explode. Every minute, one of the kids cartwheels (while bouncing cannonballs) back into the kitchen for seconds, then returns (bringing with it a family of excitable kangaroos) to the TV. Meanwhile the toilet is flushed, on average, fifty times per drop of urine expelled. Finally, there is a ten-minute period of intensive yelling, and at 8:15 on the dot they all howl and crash their way out of the apartment to school.” (p.137)
— Stephen Clarke, A Year in the Merde
What I love most about my home is who I share it with.
— Tad Carpenter
Tell me about your family," I said. And so she did. I listened intently as my mother went through each branch of the tree. Years later, after the funeral, Maria had asked me questions about the family - who was related to whom - and I struggled. I couldn't remember. A big chunk of our history had been buried with my mother. You should never let your past disappear that way.
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
They seem nice, though, your sisters, really,' Porcelain remarked.'Ha!' I said. 'Shows what little you know! I hate them!''Hate them? I should have thought you'd love them.''Of course I love them,' I said.... 'That's why I'm so good at hating them.
— Alan Bradley, A Red Herring Without Mustard
Trolls have a longstanding animosity for goats--"Who's that trip-tapping across my bridge!?"--and this led me to think that perhaps trolls are related to goats, since it seems a lot more plausible to me that your relatives would make you insane than some random hooved mammal, however ecologically destructive it might be. What if trolls evolved from goats? Or, no, better yet, what if goats evolved from trolls? Or were domesticated from trolls by human shepherds? And the trolls despise their domesticated cousins as a disgrace to the once-proud troll race, (much as I assume wolves would despise Chihuahuas if they ever gave them much thought) and eat them at every opportunity.
— Ursula Vernon
I thought about the earth then, really thought about it, the tsunami's and earthquakes and volcanoes, all the horrors I haven't witnessed but have changed my life, the lives of everyone I know, all the people I'll never know. I thought about life without the sun, the moon, stars, without flowers and warm days in May. I thought about a year ago and all the good things I'd taken for granted and all the unbearable things that had replaced those simple blessings. And even though I hated the thought of crying in from of Syl, tears streamed down my face.
— Susan Beth Pfeffer, This World We Live In
Accept the fact that girls squeal when they're happy or confused or excited or scared or because they just saw a certain boy in line.
— Harry H. Harrison Jr., Father to Daughter: Life Lessons on Raising a Girl
Then Henry speaks again. "Did he do it?"I turn to him slowly. "Does it matter?
— Jodi Picoult, House Rules
They're the perfect loving fam'ly, so adoring...And I love them ev'ry day of ev'ry week.So my son's a little shit, my husband's boring,And my daughter, though a genius, is a freak.
— Brian Yorkey, Next to Normal
I looked into her eyes, and saw my own staring back, the same peculiar shade, pale grey, flecked with yellow, rimmed with black. Now I knew the nature of her debt. It had weighed on her conscience for fourteen years. I was looking into the eyes of mother and I knew that I would never see her again.
— Celia Rees, Witch Child
The lamp sizzled as it burned. It made everything seem close and safe, a little family circle they all knew and trusted. Outside this circle lay everything that was strange and frightening, and the darkness seemed to reach higher and higher and further and further away, right to the end of the world.
— Tove Jansson, Moominpappa at Sea
Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they aged, to protect them from harm. A moral coward, she kept her distance.
— Joyce Carol Oates, High Lonesome: Selected Stories, 1966-2006
This was not a good idea coming home for Christmas. I'm too old. Years ago, coming back from schools or trips, I always expected some sort of new perspective or fresh insight about the family on returning. That doesn't happen anymore-the days of revelation about my parents, at least, are over... its time to move on. I think we'd all appreciate that.
— Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
What I hope you'll remember, Grace-is that all your life there will be people who have more than you-and people who have less. Grace hung her head. What's really important,'Miss Louise went on to say,'are the connections you have with the people you love. Your family, your friends, Grace-truly, those are the things that matter. Those are the things that will always matter the most.
— Priscilla Cummings, Saving Grace
THE UNFORGIVENTell me if you've ever had to deal with these kinds of people:The kind who take and don't give.The kind to whom you give and give,And they keep asking.The kind to whom you give and give and they say you gave nothing.The kind whom have never offered anything,But act like they're the ones providingEVERYTHING.The kind you give and give,But take more than you can give.And when they have already taken everything,They get mad at you when you say you haveNothing more to give.The unforgiving,The misgiving,Wastefully living -And selfishly driven.The rat that never gives back,Yet is so quick to attack -Because they think the wordTAKINGSeriously meansGIVING.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
They do not love, that do not show their love.
— William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona
...; Clary saw the group of lycanthropes look up, alert as a group of hunting dogs senting game. She turned- And saw Luke, tired and bloodstained, coming through the double doors of the Hall. She ran toward him. Forgetting how upset she'd been when he'd left, and forgetting how angry he'd been with her for bringing them here, forgetting everything but how glad she was to see him. He looked surprised for a moment as she barreled toward him- then he smiled, and put his arms out, and picked her up as he hugged her, the way he'd done when she'd been very small. He smelled like blood and flannel and smoke, and for a moment she closed her eyes, thinking of the way Alec had grabbed onto Jace the moment he'd seen him in the Hall, because that was what you did with family when you'd been worried about them, you grabbed them and held on to them and told them how much they'd pissed you off, and it was okay, becaused no matter how angry you got, they still belonged to you. And what she had said to Valentine was true. Luke was her family.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
He laughs. And in his laugh I hear bliss. I hear feet dancing, the rush of skirts twirling. The sound of children.Is that the first sign of love?You hear in the person you're destined to love the sound of those yet to be born.
— Alyson Richman, The Lost Wife
You can't force folks to have good sense, even if they're family. Maybe especially then.
— Patricia C. Wrede, Across the Great Barrier
You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?
— Homer, The Iliad
I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.
— Koren Zailckas, Fury: A Memoir
They may already know too much about their mother and father--nothing being more factual than divorce, where so much has to be explained and worked through intelligently (though they have tried to stay equable). I've noticed this is often the time when children begin calling their parents by their first names, becoming little ironists after their parents' faults. What could be lonelier for a parent than to be criticized by his child on a first-name basis?
— Richard Ford, The Sportswriter
It was funny how dad was more honest in a book that anyone in the world could pick up and read than he could be talking to me. Or maybe it was sad. One or the other. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
— Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
Along with the trust issues, one of the hardest parts to deal with is the feeling of not being believed or supported, especially by your own grandparents and extended family. When I have been through so much pain and hurt and have to live with the scars every day, I get angry knowing that others think it is all made up or they brush it off because my cousin was a teenager. I was ten when I was first sexually abused by my cousin, and a majority of my relatives have taken the perpetrator's side. I have cried many times about everything and how my relatives gave no support or love to me as a kid when this all came out. Not one relative ever came up to that innocent little girl I was and said "I am sorry for what you went through" or "I am here for you." Instead they said hurtful things: "Oh he was young." "That is what kids do." "It is not like he was some older man you didn't know." Why does age make a difference? It is a sick way of thinking. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse. What is wrong with this picture? It brings tears to my eyes the way my relatives have reacted to this and cannot accept the truth. Denial is where they would rather stay.
— Erin Merryn, Living for Today: From Incest and Molestation to Fearlessness and Forgiveness
What I think was hardest for me to realize was that he had tried each time to stop himself. He had killed animals, taking lesser lives to keep from killing a child
— Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
She has always been a bystander in family destruction, never realizing she herself possessed the capacity to inflict it.
— Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man of My Dreams
to us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.
— Barbara Bush
The best part of being married is that now when we walk down the street, people won't just see two guys and a kid, they'll have to see a FAMILY.
— Patricia A. Gozemba, Courting Equality: A Documentary History of America's First Legal Same-Sex Marriages
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, Abundance of the Heart
Family is not an important thing, it is everything
— Michael J. Fox
No, I`m putting it away, trying to buy a house for my family. The goal is to use the money to move into a big house, so my daughter can have a garden.
— Ewan McGregor
Christmas was definitely the best thing ever, even better than pizza. But instead of all her favorite toppings, Amitola was surrounded by all her favorite people.
— Aishabella Sheikh, Jungle Princess
[Jesus] stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through him and unto him (John 1:3; 1st Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2), he is the sole Mediator in the world...The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion. All the time we thought we had enjoyed a direct relation with men and things. This is what had hindered us from faith and obedience. Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, bothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible. Since the coming of Christ, his followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves.But since we are bound to abhor any deception which hides the truth from our sight, we must of necessity repudiate any direct relationship with the things of this world--and that for the sake of Christ. Wherever a group, be it large or small, prevents us from standing alone before Christ, wherever such a group raises a claim of immediacy it must be hated for the sake of Christ. For every immediacy, whether we realize it or not, means hatred of Christ, and this is especially true where such relationships claim the sanctions of Christian principles.,,There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology, however frank and open our behavior, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbors through him. That is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbors, and corporate prayer, offered in the name of Christ, the purest form of fellowship.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.
— Jane Austen, Persuasion
I wanted only a familiar voice, someone who knew me. Not some earlier, larval version of myself. . .
— Jennifer Haigh, Faith
All that history, the love & laughter, is designed for youth. It is what keeps the story of who we are alive from one generation to the next. It ensures our indelible mark in the souls of generations we will never have the pleasure of holding in a warm embrace. Life is short people. Before you know it, another decade will pass, people you love will be lost to this world, and all that will be left of them is what we carry in our hearts." 2011
— E.B. Loan
At home, they'd clipped my wings and then caged me so I couldn't fall. Here, they bandaged one another's broken wings, helped each other fly.
— Holly Cupala, Don't Breathe a Word
A family is a mystery.
— Sharon Olds
Imagine that the world had created a new 'dream product' to feed and immunize everyone born on earth. Imagine also that it was available everywhere, required no storage or delivery, and helped mothers plan their families and reduce the risk of cancer. Then imagine that the world refused to use it.
— Frank A. Oski
She had to go," said Rose."It was because of her angel," said Indigo."And because of Granddad," added Caddy."And because of her nose stud.""And because her name isn't on the color chart.""She's lonely," said Rose. "That's why.
— Hilary McKay, Saffy's Angel
Family is just accident, Jessie. It's nothing personal, hon. They don't mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family, they just are.
— Marsha Norman, 'night, Mother
Our pets are our family.
— Ana Monnar
We are a motley bunch. But we more than make up for it with tenacity." ~ Ralston to Simon
— Sarah MacLean, Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart
Families are like puzzles. They fit together in a certain way, and if one piece is missing, it throws everything off.
— Richard Schiff
a father for whom everything is an unshakable duty, for whom there is a right way and a wrong way and nothing in between, a father whose compound of ambitions, biases, and beliefs is so unruffled by careful thinking that he isn’t as easy to escape from as he seems. Limited men with limitless energy; men quick to be friendly and quick to be fed up; men for whom the most serious thing in life is to keep going despite everything. And we were their sons. It was our job to love them.
— Philip Roth, American Pastoral
It's so easy to focus on the anguish and the misery; it's harder, somehow, to acknowledge the positive, maybe for fear of jinxing it, bringing the nightmare back down on our heads.
— Harriet Brown, Brave Girl Eating: A Family's Struggle with Anorexia
Just like that. Gone forever. They will not grow old together. They will never live on a beach by the sea, their hair turned white, dancing in a living room to Billie Holiday or Nat Cole. They will not enter a New York club at midnight and show the poor hip-hop fools how to dance. They will not chuckle together over the endless folly of the world, its vanities and stupid ambitions. They will not hug each other in any chilly New York dawn. 	Oh, Mary Lou.	My baby.	My love.
— Pete Hamill, Tabloid City
She craved a family, not having had enough of one to understand what a pain in the ass it was.
— Maile Meloy, Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It
The Internet doesn’t love you or need you – but your family does.
— James Chartrand
Her family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating. For many years of her life she had had two sons; but the crime and annihilation of Edward a few weeks ago, had robbed her of one; the similar annihilation of Robert had left her for a fortnight without any; and now, by the resurrection of Edward, she had one again.
— Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Wherever the family was, these two dogs, both six-year-old shepherd mixes, took up their posts at the central coming-and-going point. Gil called them concierge dogs. And it's true, they were inquisitive and accommodating. But they were not fawning or overly playful. They were watchful and thoughtful. Irene thought they had gravitas. Weighty demeanors. She thought of them as diplomats. She had noticed that when Gil was about to lose his temper one of the dogs always appeared and did something to divert his attention. Sometimes they acted like fools, but it was brilliant acting. Once, when he was furious about a bill for the late fees for a lost video, one of the dogs had walked right up to Gil and lifted his leg over his shoe. Gil was shouting at Florian when the piss splattered down, and she'd felt a sudden jolt of pride in the dog.
— Louise Erdrich, Shadow Tag
Heritage was everything: it was a golden skeleton key, gleaming with power, able to get the wielder through any number of locked doors; it was the christening of the marriage bed with virgin blood on snow-white sheets; it was the benediction of a pristine pedigree, refined through ages of selective breeding and the occasional mercy culling.It was life, and death, and all that spanned between.It was his birthright.
— Nenia Campbell, Black Beast
Prospero the Enchanter's immediate reaction upon meeting his daughter is a simple declaration of: "Well, fuck.
— Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
Where does the family start? It starts with a young man falling in love with a girl - no superior alternative has yet been found.
— Winston S. Churchill
But they're family, and you forgive them, even if they are human equivalent of hyenas. Because that's what you do, Posey. Forgive.
— Kristan Higgins, Until There Was You
Since that night I have come to understand that sometimes the best families of all are those we create ourselves, the people we choose to be with.
— Silas House, Eli the Good
What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed there, regardless.
— Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
I've remembered that most of life is about small, essential connections, so unobtrusive, so elastic, that you scarcely realize they're actually holding you together. The big ones-the great, grand emotional bonds-those are the ones that break, the ones that fail you, the ones that give way and send you careening toward the foot of the bleak and jagged canyon. It's the tough, gnarled, unadorned ties that really do bind, that never let you fall all the way down into darkness.
— Sharon Shinn, The Shape of Desire
Scorned and torn, former love mates aim and shoot childish devastating daggers that penetrate beyond target to pierce the heart of their offspring.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
We're all family--the only family we've got. It doesn't have to be blood.
— Holly Cupala, Don't Breathe a Word
To begin with, I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite enough to dine with one's own relations.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Strangers take a long time to become acquainted, particularly when they are from the same family.
— M.E. Kerr, Am I Blue?: Coming Out from the Silence
You want to know what I want? I'm sick of being a guinea pig. I'm sick, but I'm never f*cking sick enough for this family.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree......unless that tree's growing on top of a hill.
— John DePrey
You have no idea how dearly I wish you were of my blood. My daughter, granddaughter. Will you allow me to take pride in what you are?"-- Sandre to Catriana
— Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
Family drama is a trade off for having family.
— C.C. Hunter, Chosen at Nightfall
A true diamond never over shadows... it's the brilliance of the subtle shine that's the most attractive.
— Dena Tyson, Xceptance
You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence.
— Gregory Maguire, A Lion Among Men
England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control - that, perhaps is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.
— George Orwell, Why I Write
We went our several ways," said Lady Dedlock, "and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I suppose, but it could not be helped.
— Charles Dickens, Bleak House
I think that is the very definition of a family: a group of individuals, bound by the essence of love, who share a life together and yet maintain their unique individuality.
— Kathy Magliato, Healing Hearts: A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon
You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair." Douglas MacArthur
— Terri  Marie, The Shack, Merry and a Cat Named Cha-moan