c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The first step to solving any problem is to accept one’s own accountability for creating it.
— Stan Slap
You don't have to fear your own company being perceived as human. You want it. People don't trust companies
—  they trust people.
Being relevant to your customers only when you’re trying to sell something means choosing to be irrelevant to them for the rest of the time.
— Stan Slap
There will be plenty of other problems in the future. This is as good a time as any to get ahead of them.
— Stan Slap
The reputation of a great work ethic that took years to build can be forgotten with one act of misjudgment.
— Mark W. Boyer, Resumes 101: Get in Step
The economy is in ruins! Bottom line? Good management will defeat a bad economy.
— Stan Slap
No matter how slow or long it takes, it is never too late to right a wrong.
— Mark W. Boyer
A knowledgeable manager can lend to the success of an organization "almost" as much as a poorly trained manager can damage it.
— Mark W. Boyer
One cannot lead well until one learns to follow well.
— Jacqueline Patricks
There is no "one" way to be a perfect leader, but there are a million ways to be a good one.
— Mark W. Boyer
Your company is its own competition and can deliver itself debilitating blows the competition only dreams of.
— Stan Slap
Stop categorizing and labeling! This is your way to avoid the unknown but brings the risk to avoid the new!
— Rossana Condoleo
Never be SARCASTIC. A clever remark might gain you a few laughs but the butt of your remarks will be offended and will remember you for it.
— Gary L. Graybill, Leadership: The First Step
Leadership is a SERVING relationship with OTHERS that inspires THEIR growth and makes the world a better place
— Fela Durotoye
Leaders create a legacy daily.
— Steve Gutzler
There is no better manager than a natural born one.
— Rossana Condoleo
Instead of waiting for a leader you can believe in, try this: Become a leader you can believe in.
— Stan Slap
The purpose of leadership is to change the world around you in the name of your values, so you can live those values more fully.
— Stan Slap
Profitability. Growth. Quality. Exceeding customer expectations. These are not examples of values. These are examples of corporate strategies being sold to you as values.
— Stan Slap
When you’re a manager, you work for your company. When you’re a leader, your company works for you.
— Stan Slap
Work/life balance is not about escaping work. It’s about living exactly the way you want to when you’re at work.
— Stan Slap
What first separates a leader from a normal human being? A leader knows who they are as a human being.
— Stan Slap
True leaders live their values everywhere, not just in the workplace.
— Stan Slap
The worst thing in your own development as a leader is not to do it wrong. It’s to do it for the wrong reasons.
— Stan Slap
When rewards come from an external source instead of an internal source, they’re unreliable, which means they’re dangerous if you grow to depend on them.
— Stan Slap
A company can’t buy true emotional commitment from managers no matter how much it’s willing to spend
—  this is something too valuable to have a price tag. And yet a company can’t afford not to have it.
Human behavior is only unpredictable and dangerous if you don’t start from humanity in the first place.
— Stan Slap
Imagine a world where what you say synchs up, not sinks down.
— Stan Slap
Why live my personal values at work? This is an excellent question to ask. If your attorneys are planning an insanity defense.
— Stan Slap
Here’s what you need to know most about leadership: Lead your own life first. The only thing in this world that will dependably happen from the top down is the digging of your grave.
— Stan Slap
The myth of management is that your personal values are irrelevant or inappropriate at work.
— Stan Slap
It’s impossible for a company to get what it wants most if managers have to make a choice between their own values and company priorities.
— Stan Slap
Try not to take this the wrong way, but your brain is smarter than you are.
— Stan Slap
A manager’s emotional commitment is the ultimate trigger for their discretionary effort, worth more than financial, intellectual & physical commitment combined.
— Stan Slap
You can stuff yourself with emotional fulfillment until it’s dribbling down your chin & your ego will quickly chomp it down and demand more.
— Stan Slap
Your dreams and the dreams of your company may be different, but they are in no way incompatible.
— Stan Slap
Providing the ultimate solution to work/life balance: not escaping from work but living the way you want to at work.
— Stan Slap
Your company really has to work for you before you’ll really work for your company.
— Stan Slap
What companies want most from their managers is what they most stop their managers from giving. What managers want most from their jobs is what they most stop themselves from getting.
— Stan Slap
Most managers have plenty of emotional commitment to give to their jobs. If they can be convinced it’s safe and sensible to give it.
— Stan Slap
What managers want most from companies they stop themselves from getting.What companies want most from managers they stop them from giving.
— Stan Slap
This is your one and only precious life. Somebody’s going to decide how it’s going to be lived and that person had better be you.
— Stan Slap
A manager’s emotional commitment is worth more than their financial, intellectual and physical commitment combined.
— Stan Slap
Emotional commitment is a personal choice. Managers understand this even if their companies don’t.
— Stan Slap
Emotional commitment means unchecked, unvarnished devotion to the company and its success; any legendary organizational performance is the result of emotionally committed managers.
— Stan Slap
The company may have captured their minds, their bodies and their pockets, but that doesn’t mean it’s captured their hearts.
— Stan Slap
Values are deeply held personal beliefs that form your own priority code for living.
— Stan Slap
Success means: I want to know the work I do means something to somebody and helps make the world, if not a Better place, not a worse one.
— Stan Slap
Your values are your essence: an undistorted mirror showing you at your pure, attractive best.
— Stan Slap
Careful now: even a financially rewarding, intellectually stimulating work environment isn’t the same as living your own values.
— Stan Slap
Values are the individual biases that allow you to decide which actions are true for you alone.
— Stan Slap
Success for Managers means: I want to be in healthy relationships. I want a real connection with people I spend so much time with.
— Stan Slap
Let’s get right on top of the bottom line: You must live your personal values at work.
— Stan Slap
Any expert will tell you that if you want emotionally committed relationships then people must be allowed to be true to who they are.
— Stan Slap
When you’re not on your own agenda, you’re prey to the agenda of others.
— Stan Slap
Leadership creates performance in people because it impacts willingness; it’s a matter of modeling, inspiring, and reinforcing.
— Stan Slap
Management controls performance in people because it impacts skills; it’s a matter of monitoring, analyzing and directing.
— Stan Slap
To integrate one’s experiences around a coherent and enduring sense of self lies at the core of creating a user’s guide to life.
— Stan Slap
Leaders are people who know exactly who they are. They know exactly where they want to go. They’re hell-bent on getting there.
— Stan Slap
Leaders make a lot of mistakes but they admit those mistakes to themselves and change because of them.
— Stan Slap
Managers know what they want most: to be allowed to achieve success by leveraging who they are, not by compromising it.
— Stan Slap
The high quality of a company’s customer experience rarely has anything to do with the high price of their product.
— Stan Slap
Companies should be the best possible place to practice fulfillment, to live out values and to realize deep connectivity and purpose.
— Stan Slap
The heart of a company’s performance is hardwired to the hearts of its managers.
— Stan Slap
Do you think your people struggle with being true to themselves? Do their values match up with their work?
— Stan Slap
Hard-core results come from igniting the massive power of emotional commitment. Are your people committed?
— Stan Slap
When you don’t know what true for you, everyone else has unusual influence.
— Stan Slap
I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.
— Maya Angelou
She wanted to ask him why they were all strangers who shared the same last name.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
...Families are Forever, and wondered if the slogan was meant as a promise or a threat.
— Brady Udall, The Lonely Polygamist
Kat looked down at her lemonade. 'Do you think he betrayed the love of his life...because of us?''She used the name Romani, Kat,' was Gabrielle's answer. 'And besides...' She let the words draw out. Her gaze went to the distance, and there was a sense of peace in the way she said, 'WE'RE the love of his life.' She raised her glass again. 'To family.
— Ally Carter, Uncommon Criminals
Because I miss them. Because I need them. Because I love them.
— Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
We sat like that for a long while, and when we stood up, all my sad things were in boxes, and Beck was my father.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Forever
the harsh truth of every relationship, even between those who love each other, like fathers and sons and daughters, or husbands and wives, is that the love is always unequal.
— Karl Taro Greenfeld, Triburbia
With love like that, you can't get pick about how it finds you or the details. All that matters is that it's there. Better late than never.
— Sarah Dessen, The Moon and More
Twenty years after we had left so fierce and proud, we were all right back where we had started, yoked to each other and the same old drama.
— Dorothy Allison, Trash: Stories
Your best is good enough.
— Vivian E. Greenberg, Your Best is Good Enough: Aging Parents and Your Emotions
You mustn't stand about. Come home with me to dinner.’‘No.’ More shakes his head. ‘I would rather be blown around on the river and go home hungry. If I could trust you only to put food in my mouth – but you will put words into it.
— Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
In my family strange is relative.
— Kate Rockland, Falling Is Like This
The boughs, without becoming detached from the trunk grow away from it.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
If she were alive today, she would be ashamed of me. I'm trying to change that.
— Eric Wilson, The Best of Evil
Sarene finally released him, wiping her eyes, disappointed in herself for crying again. Kiin simply placed a large hand on her shoulder and led her into the dining room, where the rest of the family sat around the table, even Adien.Lukel had been talking animatedly, but he cut off as he saw Sarene. "Speak the name of the lion," he said, quoting a Jindoeese proverb, "and he will come to feast.
— Brandon Sanderson, Elantris
...I’m sorry you grew up without me and that fatherly moments came second hand like clothing and toys from your brothers...
— Stephan Lawrence Theodore Clifford, Qualia
Which meant it was time for the centerpiece of the celebration, the reason they were all gathered on Saturday, the weekly episode of what, as far as many of the Davidsons including Jody were concerned was the greatest television show ever made. Hee Haw. While Roy and Buck sang the opening song, everyone would bicker and talk back and forth, what was better about the show, the music or the humor, what have you, the natural result of 40 people crowded around one rabbit eared television set. But once Hee Haw started, the talking was over. After that, it was all about the love. And so was everything before, really.
— Brian Holers, Doxology
You men never change. Is that all you can see? Proud grandfathers of a large....” Mrs. Werner smacked her husband upside the head and took the pictures away.
— Melisa M. Hamling, Twenty Weeks
Love is a creative act. When you love someone you create a new world for them. My mother did that for me, and with the progress I made and the things I learned, I came back and created a new world and a new understanding for her.
— Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
There’s no such thing as half family.
— Sasha Martin, Life from Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Forgiveness
An orange day, a happy day, a brand-new day in the secret language that only the three of us seemed to understand."Mmmmm," Daddy said, taking a bite of his roll. "Orange wakes you up, but cinnamon makes you remember.
— Judith Fertig, The Cake Therapist
In those days food was never just sustenance
—  the very act of cooking knit our disparate lives together.
There is no doubt that the family conversation is the tool that is able to make a psychological and emotional communication between family members.It opens the space widely to the family members to gather on the conversation table discussing their ideas and listening to each member point of view.And since family unity and the strong the relationship between the family members is the correct choice of the parents in every time and place, the conversation window is the correct path to strengthen family bonding and presenting the psychological and emotional support to reach that goal.
— Maryam Abdullah Alnaymi
Family: a foundation! Family: a ‘cloth’ keeps the ‘body’!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Family: a foundation! Family: a ‘cloth’ that keeps the ‘body’!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
As for you, do not wait until all lights are green to take off. Do not wait for all things to be in order such that they can see the future. You have to start were you are. You have to start now. You have to take action and make the commitment today. Do not accept to live another day in a miserable marriage. Apply what you are learning today and create the change that you want.
— Taka Sande, Little Tough Tips On Marriage
In the beginning God did not make a church or cathedral, he made a family. In the beginning God did not appoint apostles, or prophets, or pastors etc, he appointed a husband and a wife in the covenant of marriage. In Genesis, the first mankind gathering was a wedding ceremony, and not a worship meeting. After God, the next thing that came was marriage.
— Taka Sande, Little Tough Tips On Marriage
A relationship is built on trust and faith, and not on rules.
— Taka Sande, Little Tough Tips On Marriage
Diplomacy is an art of tackling our enemies. Using diplomacy on dear ones, in order to make measurable gains, is just like using a sword in place of a needle. We will be left bare very soon, and visibly so.
— Sandeep Sahajpal
Family is very important
—  it reminds you what your pasts were and not what you've become.
I looked at my little family all smiling and quite happy at the thought that Charlie had tried to maim or kill Mr. Lomax - or at least blow up his van - and I realized then that I was the only normal one.
— Nina Stibbe, Man at the Helm
This is the beginning of what we will come to call the Upstairs-Downstairs, Linga-Singha wars.
— Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors
Can I sleep with you?" asked Oz. "Kinda scary in my room. Pretty sure I saw a troll in the corner." Lou said, "Get up here." Oz climbed next to her. Oz suddenly looked troubled. "When you get married, who am I going to come get in bed with when I'm scared, Lou?" "One day you're gonna get bigger than me, then I'm going to be running to you when I get scared." "How do you know that?" "Because that's the deal God makes between big sisters and their little brothers.
— Baldacci, David
I suppose that's the reason I believe that as long as there is someone in charge of the household, someone who can maintain order among its members, someone who is clearly mature and established as a person, someone, in other words, like my mother, then eventually all who live under the same roof, despite blood ties or lineage, will at one point become family. Such a simple idea, but one that took a while for me to catch on to.Oh, and another thing.If the same people don't spend enough time in a home, even if they are connected by blood, their bonds will slowly fade away like a familiar landscape.
— Banana Yoshimoto, Amrita
The blessing begins at home.
— Taka Sande, Little Tough Tips On Marriage
Keep your heart wide open and you’ll be received with open hearts — not by everyone, but to be received by one open heart is more than worth the journey.
— Marnie Grundman, Missing A True Story Of A Childhood Lost
We may view it as our responsibility to control something that is not in fact within our control and yet fail to exercise the power and authority that we do have over our own behavior. Mothers cannot make children think, feel, or be a certain way, but we can be firm, consistent, and clear about what behavior we will and will not tolerate, and what the consequences are for misbehavior. We can also change our part in patterns that keep family members stuck. At the same time we are doomed to failure with any self-help venture if we view the problem as existing within ourselves—or within the child or the child’s father, for that matter. There is never one villain in family life, although it may appear that way on the surface.
— Harriet Lerner, The Dance Of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships
But early on I saw this: You are wasting time by suffering twice. I mention this only to show how many things the mind cannot will itself to do, even if it wants to.
— Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton
So also in a marriage or in helping a teenager through a difficult identity crisis—there is no quick fix, where you can just move in and make everything right with a positive mental attitude and a bunch of success formulas.
— Stephen Covey
At that period, rising in the world meant giving up working with your hands in favor of work in a store or an office. The people who lived in town had made it, and turned their backs socially on those who had not but were still growing corn and wheat out there in the country. What seemed like an impassable gulf was only the prejudice of a single generation, which refused to remember its own not very remote past.
— William Maxwell, Ancestors: A Family History
I felt a surge of love for my aunt. We disagreed about so many things, yet here was family: the people who kept dancing with you, even after the music stopped.
— Sibella Giorello, The Mountains Bow Down
Dad has shamelessly played the Mom card. Against which there is no defense.
— Denis Markell, Click Here to Start
Family is not just blood. It is the person who stands with you when the odds are impossible, the one who cries with you when your sadness is overwhelming. The individual who sacrifice of their time, talent and care just to let you know you are not alone. These are people that are also your family. They have the blood of the soul running in their veins. The same soul you have
— Levon Peter Poe
like many families, everyone wandered around like children in a funhouse—they could hardly see one another around the corners, and what they could see was completely distorted.
— James Hannaham, Delicious Foods
It is so unkind--' 'Perhaps. But sometimes a compulsion comes over one to speak the truth!
— Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot's Christmas
You daughter is prudish?” There was a gleam of triumph in Helena Winter’s face. Fee grimaced. Prudish? No, not that she could claim. Far too mild a word for what she felt.
— Mary Brock Jones, Torn
..All of us are vulnerable to intense, non-productive angry reactions in our current relationships if we do not deal openly and directly with emotional issues from our first family—in particular, losses and cutoffs. If we do not observe and understand how our triangles operate, our anger can keep us stuck in the past, rather than serving as an incentive and guide to form more productive relationship patterns for the future.
— Harriet Lerner, The Dance Of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships
Holy crap, Caleb! You're my uncle." Nick"No!" Caleb"It's worse. He's the half-brother of your great-grandfather." Kody"You're not helping." Caleb"No, but I'm entertaining myself at your adorable expense." Kody"Yeah, y'all are missing the important fact. To a Cajun, that makes him my uncle." Nick"Great. I always wanted to be a monkey's uncle. Nice to know I finally succeeded." Caleb
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Invision
Husband and wife are like a pair of scissors, joined together for life but always moving in opposite directions. If anyone comes in between, they join together and cut them off.
— Hare Krishna Chandrasekaran
I prick my hand as I seize the rose from her. “I’ll think about it.” A small spot of blood forms on my palm and I realize I’ve been bleeding on the inside this whole time, all these years. It was only a matter of time before it showed on the outside.
— Tracy Krimmer, Dating for Decades
Our worth comes from the promises we keep.
— Sunanda J. Chatterjee, Shadowed Promise
He was supposed to be the first man to tell her that she was beautiful and help her determine who she was before anyone had the opportunity to label her. She was supposed to be his “little girl”.
— Anais Torres, The Reaper's Daughter
Max.”It was a sharp whisper to reinstate the silence and Max did not know what kind ofacerbic retort waited on the other side of his stilted pause. Kevin had never snapped athim before, but there was a part of him that thought it would happen today.His brother turned to face him, his deep blue eyes lined with tears and burning withanguish. “You’re my brother,” he said, his voice low and unsteady. “You alreadyknow how I feel…and I know how you feel…so there’s no need to talk about this.And if you mention his name again, I’m gonna ask you leave.”Max nodded. That wasn’t the verbal lashing he was expecting but it made himunderstand his role in the situation. Kevin hadn’t played video games all day for theentertainment. He had done it for the distraction. And he hadn’t allowed Max to sit inhis room for so long because he intended to open up. He had kept Max there becausehe wanted the silent comfort, the pillar of strength only a brother could provide. - Kevin to Max
— Jacqueline Francis - Wanting to Remember, Trying to Forget
So much had never been explained to her. They were that kind of family. Things necessary to know were passed along brother to brother, sister to sister, and this sufficient for most purposes, despite inevitable error and sensationalism.
— Marilynne Robinson, Home
Emma stared at the ceiling of the hotel room. Her thoughts went over every memorial, each picture, the families and children left behind. At this point it was a nightly routine. Some people counted sheep. Emma counted her father’s victims. One by one.
— Anais Torres, The Reaper's Daughter
You married into the family. You have to love me. It's a contractual obligation.
— Julia Quinn, It's in His Kiss
I tried to teach them [his sons] that about the importance of self-discipline, and that the culture of yes is built on a foundation of no.
— Bill Walton
Glory had rehearsed angry outbursts in anticipation of his arrival. She began to hope he would come so she could tell him exactly what she thought.
— Marilynne Robinson
So much had never been explained to her. They were that kind of family. Things necessary to know were passed along brother to brother, sister to sister, and this sufficient for most purposes, despite inevitable error and sensational.
— Marilynne Robinson, Home
I've had an amazing life. One filled with blessings I could never have imagined.Depressed is the last thing I am. Realistic, yes. Sad, never.
— Viola Shipman, The Charm Bracelet
Perhaps I am a rose-picker and a breeze-sniffer.
— Sam Wazan
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, The Tsar of Love and Techno
Douglas, you have an incredible capacity for missing the point. Will you listen to me, just for once? The debate does not matter. It's not about the issues. Albie might have been naive or ridiculous or pompous or all of those things, but you apologized. You said you were embarassed by him. You took the side of a bunch of arms-dealers! Bloddy bastard arms-dealers against your son - our son - and that was wrong, it was the wrong thing to do, because in a fight you side with the people you love. That's just how it is.
— David Nicholls, Us
I sometimes wonder if I am crisscrossing my father's ghostly paths and we are entering same towns or roadside diners or the black ribbons of highways that gleam in the night rain. As if we were images in a time-lapse photograph.
— Gloria Steinem
You're my daughter. I don't care about the factions.
— Veronica Roth, Divergent
The best transactions in families or between friends occur on the fly. They come as stochastic shocks, or serendipities. People often step out onto our path as we are hurrying to a meeting or intent on finishing a project, and it usually turns out that the meeting or the project was inconsequential compared to the chance to get closer to someone we cared for.
— Alan Loy McGinnis, Balanced Life
It was about having a box in the attic or basement or attic or garage, something we could return to over and over again, something that said, this is us, this is where we were last year, and this is where we'll stay, and this is where we'll pile on the memories, over and over again, until there are so many memories that it's blinding, the brightness of family, the way love and nurturing is like a color you can't name because it's so new.
— Carrie Brownstein
The most wonderful part of life is when your family becomes your friends, and your friends become your family.
— Bernard Dsa, Sweet Temptations
It was hard not to feel sorry for a life that had no purpose of its own... His only purpose, it seemed, was to come into her mother's life in order to send her home. For that, Bay decided, she would be grateful.For the rest, though, she wondered if she would ever be able to forgive him. She hoped she wouldn't remember him long enough to find out.
— Sarah Addison Allen
Even as children they had been good in fact, but also in order to be seen as good. There was something disturbingly like hypocrisy about it all...
— Marilynne Robinson
The hardest thing about talking to teenagers, I had discovered, was that whatever you said inevitably came across like something an elderly aunt would say at a wedding.
— Jojo Moyes, After You
For a second, I see into the future: she's old and grey, she has senile dementia and can't remember my name. The thought pretty much breaks my heart in two.
— Liz Kessler, Read Me Like a Book
45,000 sections of reinforced concrete—three tons each.Nearly 300 watchtowers.Over 250 dog runs.Twenty bunkers.Sixty five miles of anti-vehicle trenches—signal wire, barbed wire, beds of nails.Over 11,000 armed guards.A death strip of sand, well-raked to reveal footprints.200 ordinary people shot dead following attempts to escape the communist regime.96 miles of concrete wall.Not your typical holiday destination.JF Kennedy said the Berlin Wall was a better option than a war. In TDTL, the Anglo-German Bishop family from the pebbledashed English suburb of Oaking argue about this—among other—notions while driving to Cold War Berlin, through all the border checks, with a plan to visit both sides of it.
— Joanna  Campbell, Tying Down the Lion
Dad was the glue to the broken pieces of our family.
— Joanie Chevalier, Save an Angel's Kiss for Me
Families, by and large, like most groups, resist change. If one member of a family wants to move away, this is regarded as a betrayal, for example. If one member of a family is fat and tries to lose weight, often other members of the family will sabotage the effort. If one member of the family wants to get out of a role he or she has been playing for years, this is usually difficult ot do because the rest of the family tries not to let it happen. If your role is clown, you remain the clown. If your role is responsible oldest child, you probably keep that role within your family for your entire life. If you are the black sheep, you'll find it very diffcult to change colors in the eyes of your family no matter how many good deeds you do.
— Edward M. Hallowell, Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood
Mmmhmmm," Mother's delicate hands touched both sides of his cheeks as she spoke, "I do. Your name means 'to give' or 'gift'. Like giving a gift, or it means you are a gift." Then she tapped his nose, "I wonder...what have you been given or what might you have to give?" She looked directly at me, and I knew she mean the question for me as well.
— Julia J. Gibbs, The Oaks Remain
They had never been able to sustain fifteen minutes’ conversation with one another without advancing irreconcilable points of view, invigorating in friendships, but in close blood relations producing only uneasy cordiality.
— Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
Mama covered her ears with her hands, but I knew she heard me. Tears streamed from her eyes and dribbled from her chin. Part of me wanted to blot her face with a tissue, real tender-like, but the evil me, the girl tired of keeping her feelings bottled up for fear I'd upset mama, was blissful at causing a commotion. Maybe it was cruel to make mama cry, but at least I had cracked her shell and got a reaction. Any response was better than talking to a zombie
— April Young Fritz, Waiting to Disappear
I rolled the ball of muffin and I waited and after my mother said, "That you should really take a multivitamin," my father threw up his hands in disgust, and I was positive I had no family at all, certain it was not my mother but the solar wind that carried me into the universe.
— Alison Espach, The Adults
Children become frustrated and resentful when they view their parents as not being interested “in how they feel and in their point of view.
— Haim G. Ginott, Between Parent and Child: The Bestselling Classic That Revolutionized Parent-Child Communication
To receive many blessings, read to your children from the womb to the tomb.
— Joyce Herzog
Then you never really feel comfortable around most people. Especially your family, who probably never seemed to understand you. But as you grow up you find others like yourself, people who support you, embrace your weirdness, and love for who you are - and they become your new family." - Tara
— Elizabeth Briggs, More Than Comics
Remember when you discovered your father owned a book called "How To Disappear and Never Be Found?" You're sure it was just research for new and creative ways of thinking, for concepts that might apply to his work, but it raised the distinct possibility that there is something very upsetting that people you love could do instead of dying.
— Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
The first person I knew who died was Beth March. I cried for three days.
— A. Louise Robertson, Welcome to Mineola
My grandfather used to wear a black hat and coat. You are my children. You are my jewels. We old ones invest our future in you.
— Diane Samuels
No outbreak of jealousy or malice has ever been welcomed in God’s eyes.” Beatrix continued, “nor shall such an outbreak ever be welcomed in the eyes of your family. If you have sentiments within you that are unpleasant or uncharitable, let them fall stillborn to the ground.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things
She knew her place in this family, always had. Knew why she was conceived. And it wasn't for a photo on the mantle.
— Kelly Moran, All of Me
Letter writing can be seen as a gift because someone has taken his/her time to write and think and express love.
— Soraya Diase Coffelt
She wouldn't climb out of the bed for her sister, but she had climbed into a crater. She wouldn't cross a room, but she had crossed a continent.
— Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
The thing about families, Arlo thought, was that there was always some question nobody wanted to answer for you, and it was like a stray thread pulling loose in a sweater. You could tug at it all you wanted, but in the end, all you'd have was a pile of twisted yarn.
— Sarah  Sullivan, All That's Missing
And the reason he cannot bear her dying is not the loss of her (which is the future) but that dying puts the two of them (now) into this nakedness together that is unforgivable.
— Anne Carson
Most parents don't know really their children.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
There might be bits and pieces of us that I don't like or that drive me up the wall, but at the end of the say, it's who we are. I'm going to make the best of what we have.
— Allison Rushby, Shooting Stars
Keep one thing in your mind; your school & friends can never teach you properly ,"how to be a good husband & father.
— Srinivas Shenoy
Beauty will never fade away from the eyes of those who love one another.
— Auliq Ice
Family isn't blood," she said bitterly, continuing to back away. "Family is who loves you, who takes care of you.
— Bruce Coville, Into the Land of the Unicorns
But in a home where grief is fresh and patience has long worn thin, making it through another day is often heroic in itself.
— Melanie Bennett, Learning to Dance in the Rain
What a happy woman I am, living in a garden, with books, babies, birds and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find happiness so ea
— Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers
Look to the past to see what the future holds.
— Celia Conrad, Wilful Murder
I'm young enough to enjoy life, and you're old enough to mind your own business.
— Virginia Aird, Grandma's Matinee Bow
If I can send you a sign, I will.
— Virginia Aird, Grandma's Matinee Bow
No zone have a perfect Family, but my Family is perfect for Me
— "Beta" Metani' Marashi
Fiction is the poor persons travel agent.
— L.Douglas Muncy, A Summer With Grandpa I'll Never Forget
A personal journey is part of the generational relay. Live your legacy then pass it on.
— Jo Ann V. Glim
I was such a smart kid, I should have figured out that the only way to really get my parents’ attention was to disappoint them or fail. But by the time I finally realized that, succeeding was already a habit too ingrained to break.
— Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride
If you look close enough, you can see cracks in everything. And that's okay. Because when you really think about it, it's the cracks and gaps and chinks in things that let the light shine in.
— D. Anne Love, Picture Perfect
Every family is a family of alligators.
— Lorrie Moore, Bark: Stories
The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.
— G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Even after Sonja graduated secondary school at the top of her class and matriculated to the city university biology department, their parents found more to love in Natasha. Sonja's gifts were too complex to be understood, and therefore less desirable.
— Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Sisters and brothers just happen, we don't get to choose them, but they become one of our most cherish relationships.
— Wes Adamson
People retreated behind their front doors into the hidden zone of their private, family worlds and when outsiders asked how things were they answered, Oh, everything’s going along just fine, not much to report, situation normal. But everyone secretly knew that behind that door things were rarely humdrum. More typically, all hell was breaking loose, as people dealt with their angry fathers, drunken mothers, resentful siblings, mad aunts, lecherous uncles and crumbling grandparents. The family was not the firm foundation upon which society rested, but stood at the dark chaotic heart of everything that ailed us. It was not normal, but surreal; not humdrum, but filled with event; not ordinary, but bizarre. He remembered with what excitement he had listened, at the age of twenty, to the Reith Lectures delivered on BBC Radio by Edmund Leach, the great anthropologist and interpreter of Claude Lévi-Strauss who, a year earlier, had succeeded Noel Annan as provost of King’s. “Far from being the basis of the good society,” Leach had said, “the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.” Yes! he thought. Yes! That is a thing I also know. The families in the novels he later wrote would be explosive, operatic, arm-waving, exclamatory, wild. People who did not like his books would sometimes criticize these fictional families for being unrealistic—not “ordinary” enough. However, readers who did like his books said to him, “Those families are exactly like my family.
— Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir
The child is right," she announced firmly.	Arrietty's eyes grew big. "Oh, no-" she began. It shocked her to be right. Parents were right, not children. Children could say anything, Arrietty knew, and enjoy saying it-knowing always they were safe and wrong.
— Mary Norton, The Borrowers
A man's heart does not love like a woman's, Lorelei. Logren would lay down and die if he thought his death would save your life because you are his sister, but his tongue is not so easily guided by his brother's heart.
— Jennifer Melzer, Edgelanders
Okay. Some things were made of hope. But not this thing. This thing he was doing, that was made of surrender. He did it anyway. At least when you surrendered, you had time to kiss the people you loved good-bye.
— Amy Lane, Ethan in Gold
You can’t forget how important coming together is, whether it be a mom and a son, a dad and a daughter, whether the family be ten people, or twenty people, or a million people. Dinnertime is the perfect time for that. Dinnertime is the perfect time when you can sit down, you can offer thanks to your kids for making you laugh, or to your parents for supporting you, or to a god for looking out for you, or to whomever you want. You can just close your eyes and open them again and realize that you have the opportunity everyday to change your life, or change someone else’s. Dinnertime is a great time to think about that.		~ Dillon, age 22 From Dinnertimes: Stories of American Life, 1912 to 2012
— Deborah L. Halliday, Dinnertimes: Stories of American Life 1912 to 2012
History will be kind to me for I have written it. Winston Churchill
— Ron Mayes, Sherrod's Legacy: Reflections of Sherrod Mayes and His Descendants
Substitute the word gay for straight and she's the exact same pain in the neck kid sister she was before she told us.
— Amy Kaufman Burk
Of course she'll move away from me, and likely from here, because she is my daughter, because she is a daughter in the twenty-first century. But we can be her fall-back plan, and her stash of memories. Her deep and wide past.
— Liz Stephens, The Days Are Gods
If I didn’t have a job, I might have stayed in bed until I rotted.
— Claire Cook, Must Love Dogs
I read therefore I write.
— John David Lionel Brooke, Mother Lode
Parents are like Kingdom, Your are the King.No matter where you stand, how Great n Rich you are!A King Is Always Known By His Kingdom.
— chetan chhibber
you don't turn your back on family, even when they do.
— Aboubakar Msangi
Adoption is grief in reverse.
— Jody Cantrell Dyer, The Eye of Adoption: The True Story of My Turbulent Wait for a Baby
My Mom and Dad and brother have grown through the years into my closest friends, the people who tell me the most searing truth, who give me soft places to rest and present to me a bright future when the only one I can see from my vantage point is dim and breaking before my eyes.
— Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life
Behind every successful man there is a woman, behind every successful woman there are wonderful parents
— Anindita
Son, make this world a better place with that beautiful mind of yours. And when you have a family of your own, love them beyond measure even when it means letting them be free to do what God intends them to do.
— Jo Ann V. Glim, Begotten with Love: Every Family Has Its Story
Now and adult, allowed a glimpse of these first cracks in my family's perfect surface, I couldn't help but wonder what else I didn't understand about us all.p 60
— Melanie Benjamin, The Aviator's Wife
Your Barney?” Cole’s eyebrows shot up. “Yours?”“He’s mine all right!” Claire replied. “Everyone in this family belongs to everyone else – belongs with everyone else, rather. I’ve looked after him for a year now – ironed his shirts, made his school lunches, told him stories. I made that dressing gown he’s wearing, whereas no one knew you were alive this time last week. But what matters most is that he wants to be ours and he doesn’t want to be yours. That’s what counts.
— Margaret Mahy, The Haunting
Every family has a destiny to fulfill....Every child is the future of his or her family and nation at large....Every father is a hero to his son (child).....Fathers are you truly heroes to your children....check your thoughts, actions and motives.....are you really living up to your children' s expectations ?
— Jaachynma N.E. Agu, Risk It, Be Different
Soon we will not need people anymore, as everything will be done by automatons, including bringing up children.
— Andrius B. Tapinas, Hour of the Wolf
Know what being a man's pet means. And if you're ever lucky enough to find yourself with the choice, choose the pasture.
— Stacy Overman Morrison, Comfort of Fences
I found myself stuck into a Gertrude’s Dream Waltz universe. Like Gertrude, I was trapped inside a body that bellied little of the person inside, while simultaneously ensnared in a home filled with people that looked like the person inside the unsightly body.
— Luella Christie, Roxy Ray
As we age, we become our parents; live long enough and we see faces repeat in time.
— Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.
— Arthur Miller, All My Sons
Some people are trapped by the belief that love comes in finite quantities, and that our kind of love exhausts the supply upon which they need to draw. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones.
— Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
...we should be grateful for them because without our family—the ancestors we descend from, the cousins we see once a year, the loves our lives we see every day—life is pretty boring.
— Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding
There are things you forget naturally-computer passwords, your father's continuing relationship with life-and then there are things you can't forget that you wish you could.
— David Sedaris, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
She knows Daddy better than I do. I think it's because she's felt since we were children that our Daddy maybe loved me more than he loves her. This isn't true, and she knows that now--people love different people in different ways--but it must have seemed that way to her when we were little. I look as though I just can't make it, she looks like can't nothing stop her. If you look helpless, people react to you in one way and if you look strong, or just come on strong, people react to you in another way, and, since you don't see what they see, this can be very painful. I think that's why Sis was always in front of that damn mirror all the time, when we were kids. She was saying, 'I don't care. I got me.' Of course, this only made her come on stronger than ever, which was the last effect she desired: but that's the way we are and that's how we can sometimes get so fucked up. Anyway, she's past all that. She knows who she is, or, at least, she knows who she damn well isn't.
— James     Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk
Whoa, that's the kind of little sister I can dig!" said Edison."Yes, we're all alike," I said. "We cover for you, we lie for you, we take the heat for you. We clean up your messes and mollify our parents for you. We never fail to come across with undying adoration, whether or not you deserve it, and we can't take our lives as seriously as yours. We snuffle up the crumbs from your table on the rare occasions you notice we're alive.
— Lionel Shriver, Big Brother
I recall those beautiful summer mornings with my parents by the sandy beach of Belek. My father used to teach me how to ride waves. I remember him constantly emphasizing the fact that no wave, no matter how big it is should stir enough fear inside me to keep me glued to the shore. He used to repeat those words while glancing at my mother with a smile that could set the whole sea on fire. My mother, sitting on the beach, too afraid of the deep blue sea, contented herself with building sand castles, ones my father would step on trying to drag her hopelessly into water. Step on your sand castle and dive deep. Dive deep into the unknown. Life is damn too short for building sand castles.
— Malak El Halabi
I think I rescued myself.
— Donna K. Childree
If you should choose to look at those files, you will have to live with the consequences of your choices while, at the same time, being mindful that these choices will not only effect you, but will also infect, sorry, I intended to say effect, our entire family.
— Donna K. Childree
Sometimes opposites attract, or so they say, but Paloma and Rocío were like arroz and mangú: they didn’t really mix well.
— Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina
Strong nations are built on SOLID HOMES not big houses
— Fela Durotoye
I'm as vulnerable as anybody to the toxicity of the American nuclear family. But I wouldn't call it disease or moral failure as much as I would point the finger at a system that grinds people down like a metal file. Who doesn't need a drink? Who isn't going to crack and lash out at the people they love?
— Susie Bright, Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir
Every family has one living patriarch or matriarch, the final arbiter and repository of ancient family history, and Nicole's Aunt Patti was the last woman standing.
— Liz Rosenberg, The Laws of Gravity
Nan is the mortar that holds the tiles of their family together.
— William Paul Young, The Shack
She pictured a dandelion gone by, the white, almost airless pieces of her family scattered so far.
— Elizabeth Strout
I think we should wean Grandma.
— Renata Suerth, New School & Other Stuff
What matters right now is this: we're each of us standing here, together, alive, together.
— Beth Revis, Shades of Earth
If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.
— Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
If our family was an airline, Mom was the hub and we were the spokes. You rarely went anywhere nonstop; you went via Mom, who directed the traffic flow and determined the priorities: which family member was cleared for takeoff or landing. Even my father was not immune to Mom's scheduling, though he was given more leeway than the rest of us.
— Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club
Life is filled with rhythms-day and night, hot and cold, summer and winter, spring and fall, cloudy and clear. Likewise in a relationship, men and women have their own rhythms and cycles.
— John Gray
You'd think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people, so many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.
— Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
When a woman once asked Joe how he could come from such a magnificent home and such a good family and still become a gangster, Joe's answer was two-pronged: (a) he wasn't a gangster, he was an outlaw; (b) he came from a magnificent house not a magnificent home.
— Dennis Lehane, Live by Night