c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The life that brings light in the family often attracts darkness in form of envy and hatred that stands as encumbrances
— ETC Wanyanwu
They projected an illusion of warmth with their home-cooking and hand-stitched quilts, yet underneath the facade was an institutional rigidity, as if they were running an orphanage where children would be fed and cared for but never loved. Love was such a key ingredient in molding humans, yet it was inaccessible to kids inside of the system.
— Renee Carlino, Swear on This Life
When a hug is this big, you feel it for days.
— Jessica Shook, Shrapnel
We had been two sides of the same coin, attached by a force stronger than family or friends. We had been one.
— Robin M. King, Memory of Monet
Family. The greatest loyalty after God.
— Sarah Dunant, Blood & Beauty: The Borgias
Abruptly, the sea of people parted . . . and then there they were. Bella, with Nalla in her arms, Z standing beside his girls. Beth broke down all over again as the female came forward. God, it was impossible not to remember how Nalla had started this, putting into motion the need that had become undeniable. Bella was tearing up, too, as she stopped. “We just want to say yay!” At that moment, Nalla reached out to Beth, a gummy smile on her face, pure joy radiating out. No turning that down, nope, not at all. Beth took the little girl out of her mother’s arms and positioned her on her chest, capturing one of the pinwheeling hands and giving kisses, kisses, kisses. “You ready to be a big . . .” Beth glanced at Z and then her husband. “. . . a big sister?” Yes, Beth thought. Because that’s what the Brotherhood and their families were. Close as siblings, tighter than blood because they were chosen. “Yes, she is,” Bella said as she wiped under her eyes and looked back at Z. “She is so ready.” “My brother.” Z shoved out his palm, his scarred face in a half smile, his yellow eyes warm. “Congratulations.” Instead of shaking anything, Wrath shoved that ultrasound picture into his Brother’s face. “Do you see him? See my son? He’s big, right, Beth?” She kissed Nalla’s supersoft hair. “Yes.” “Big and healthy, right?” Beth laughed some more. “Big and healthy. Absolutely perfect.” “Perfect!” Wrath bellowed. “And this is a doctor saying it—I mean, she went to medical school.” Even Z started laughing at that point. Beth gave Nalla back to her parents. “And Dr. Sam told me she’s delivered over fifteen thousand babies over the course of her career—” “See!” Wrath yelled. “She knows these things. My son is perfect! Where’s the champagne? Fritz! Get the fucking champagne!
— J.R. Ward, The King
Don't wait until the fourth Thursday in November, to sit with family and friends to give thanks.Make every day a day of Thanksgiving!
— Charmaine J. Forde
Do it double, because some can't do it at all.
— Clara Kensie, Aftermath
Oh, I loathe weddings. I loathe sitting down and participating in inane conversations with proud parents and smug couples who all look like they might secretly hate each other.
— Saleem Haddad, Guapa
Something contracts in my chest. The air shifts, grows heavy and dense as mud. Alexa twists her hair around her finger and whispers, "Didn't you even try to escape, Charlotte?
— Clara Kensie, Aftermath
I say to my sister, "I thought you were doing the things in our Dream Book. I was sure of it." "Why would I do that stuff without you?" "Because you could.""Well, you were wrong.
— Clara Kensie, Aftermath
Rory, I want to say that death is what you've always wanted. But that can't be the Truth. [This time] we can blame it on me. I'll be the packing mule, carry all the burden. & you, you can be a child again; fold your church hands like dirty laundry [crease them tight]. Nobody has to know about us, not my fathernor yours --No, not even God
— Christopher Soto, Sad Girl Poems
Each second of my four years, two months, and seven days in the attic dragged on forever, and nothing ever changed. But outside the attic, everything changed, and so violently fast. Destruction and devastation for all of us, whether we were in the attic or out.
— Clara Kensie, Aftermath
The only thing that gave me comfort in the attic was thinking about my family. Now I'm home, but it's not the home I imagined. Not the family I imagined. I'd convinced myself that they'd continued on with their happy, carefree lives without me, that they were doing it double, because I couldn't do it at all. I was wrong.
— Clara Kensie, Aftermath
My sister has never not told me something before. We used to share every secret, every thought. While I was in the attic, it felt like we were forever far away. Now I'm with her again. We're so close that we're touching, but there's still a distance between us.
— Clara Kensie, Aftermath
Alexa's face whitens. The coil of hair loosens itself from her finger. "You did it for me. You never fought back. Because you thought you were keeping me safe."I pull up my gaze to meet hers. "Yeah.""I--" It's a strangled, high-pitched sound, laced with shock and grief. Then she bites her lips shut. Her chin trembles, just once, before she turns away.
— Clara Kensie, Aftermath
My Keeper took everything from me: my home, my family, my voice. He made me powerless. But I'm home now. It may be split in two, but I have it back. My family may be broken, but I have it back. I have my voice back. I am not powerless anymore.
— Clara Kensie, Aftermath
360° AccountabilityAs an Entrepreneur, you are held: Accountable to GodAccountable to Your FamilyAccountable to Your TeamAccountable to Your ClientsAccountable to YourselfAccountable to Your Outcome
— Farshad Asl
The only way to learn who you are is to leave home.
— Sana Krasikov
Girls like me smiled politely and always did the right thing. Girls like me definitely didn't sneak away at night to do things that would crush their fathers. And if they did, girls like me knew how to keep it to themselves.
— Robin Talley, Our Own Private Universe
As they ran to the barn and began the careful climb up the steep ladder, Lily realized she had accidentally put on snow boots in her hurry. When they reached the top, the quiet hush of the still hayloft gave them that whisper-in-the-library feeling.
— Kate Willis, The Treasure Hunt
You’re not going to lose me again,” aku berjanji. “You’ve never lost me in the first place anyway.”Dapat kurasakan dirinya tersenyum dalam rangkulanku. “And you’ve never lost me either.
— Winna Efendi, Some Kind of Wonderful
Breaking your family's heart was the price you paid for rescuing your own.
— Sana Krasikov
Mothers are urgently trying to tell something to their daughters, and this urgency is precisely what repels their daughters, forcing them to turn away. Mothers are left stranded, madly holding a lump of London clay, some grass, some white tubers, a dandelion, a fat worm passing the world through itself.
— Zadie Smith, NW
I loved them too and while you might lay a greater claim to them, I defy you to miss your wife any more than I’ll miss my best friend or your child, who was every inch a son to me.
— Fiona McIntosh, The French Promise
Even the worst things about Devonairre Street are better than the rest of the city.
— Corey Ann Haydu, The Careful Undressing of Love
Sometimes you just need the comforts of home, the familiarity of your own family bed and only the pampering a mother can do.
— Emily  Williams, Letters to Eloise
ArtifactAs long as I can remember you kept the rifle--your grandfather's an antique you called it-in your study, propped against the tall shelvesthat held your many books. Upright,beside those hard-worn spins, it was anotherbackbone of your pas, a remnant I studiedas if it might unlock-- like the skeleton keyits long body resembled-- some door i had yetto find. Peering into the dark muzzle, I imagined a bulletas you described: spiraling through the boreand spinning straight for its target. It did not hit methen: the rifle I'd inherited showing mehow one life is bound to another, that hardshipendures. For years I admired its slender profile,until-- late one night, somber with drink--you told meit still worked, that you kept it loaded just in case,and I saw the rifle for what it is; a relicsharp as sorrow, the barrel hollow as regret.
— Natasha Trethewey, Thrall
It is a characteristic of human beings that if they haven’t got a family of their own, they will invent one.
— Angela Carter
Neither father nor son moved, but stayed face to face for hours and hours, neither looking away nor surrendering, until the sun finished its daily pilgrimage, for no day is so long that it is not ended by nightfall.
— Rabih Alameddine, The Hakawati
In that moment? I knew you were sent to me, that I'd been given nothing from the people in my life, but I think from God, or whoever is in charge, I got you.
— Debra Anastasia, Poughkeepsie Begins
Squashed behind The Cloud of Unknowing we discovered a pocket-size spiral notebook with a day-by-day account of the time Justin had stayed with her and her husband after Tommy’s death. The writing was legible though it required effort (this was before she took her calligraphy course), but Justin was ecstatic and asked if he could have the little notebook. “This is my history,” he said. Later, after he had deciphered every last word: “Boy, was I loved.
— Gail Godwin, Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir
Family is everything!” he always said when he went overboard with sentimentality. “If you don’t have family, what do you have?
— Sonal Panse, The Sunshine Time: Season 1 Episode 4
Know that I love you immensely, and you hurry home.
— Bea Weaver
Like Christmas trees and Easter egg hunts and the block party on the last day of summer, we do things because traditions feel cozy and safe.
— Corey Ann Haydu
For the old people in my family—Mummy, the aunties, Granddad—the accumulation of beautiful objects is a life goal.Whoever dies with the most stuff wins.Wins what? is what I’d like to know.
— E. Lockhart, We Were Liars
Oh, I'm not worried about him,' returned Bill. 'He's gone. It's not any more complicated than that. Honestly, if I admit it, it's me that I feel bad for.' He walked away from me and looked out toward the south. 'There's nothing like having a parent die to make you realize how alone you are in the world,' he added.
— Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
I could give him business cards...multi-camoflauge background. David, woodworker, amateur computer coder, and decoder extraordinaire," Lily daydreamed."Coder and decoder," Anna chuckled.
— Kate Willis, The Treasure Hunt
When people show you who they are, believe them.
— Jane Green, Family Pictures
Shock doesn't hit all at once. I have learned.
— Jane Green, Family Pictures
It all started with one of those days--one of those muggy, first-of-the-summer-vacation days when everyone older and everyone younger knew what to do, but everyone in between was lost.
— Kate Willis, The Treasure Hunt
How does a boy without a father grow up to be a man? How does he learn to make the hard decisions he's going to have to make in life, the ones only a man can teach?
— Sylar, Heroes
People show you who they are, not by what they say, but by what they do.
— Jane Green, Family Pictures
You can deny him, he thought, watching his father across the table. You can hate him, love him, pity him, never speak to or look at him in the eye again, never deign even to be in his crabbed and bitter presence, but you're still stuck with the son of a bitch. One way or another he'll always be your daddy, not even all-powerful death was going to change that.
— Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Family therapists view the therapeutic relationship as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself. Family therapists see beyond the problematic patterns in the family to the potential healing power of family relationships.
— Joseph A. Micucci, The Adolescent in Family Therapy: Harnessing the Power of Relationships
Goddamn it, Joanna!' Claire called. After twelve years her voice was sharper than Jo remembered. 'I know you're standing on the stairs,' she said. 'I can see you. Get down here and help me!
— Tiffany Baker, The Gilly Salt Sisters
She did it without thinking--At that moment she was pure Gilly again: red-haired, with fury for blood, perfect aim, and nothing to lose.
— Tiffany Baker, The Gilly Salt Sisters
The two sisters were connected by neither love nor mutual affinity but by a very small bathroom that could be entered from the bedroom on either side.
— Ann Patchett, Commonwealth
She would talk to him in the car, ask him something, then turn on the radio and find her question answered by the lyrics of a song; pick up a book and turn to a random page, to find the words that were exactly what she needed to hear. There is no such thing as coincidence, she would think, blowing a kiss of thanks to the heavens.
— Jane Green, Family Pictures
There is something magical about young love, when you still think that the world is your oyster and you have your whole life ahead of you.
— Jane Green, Family Pictures
Bad things always happen in three.
— Jane Green, Family Pictures
You discover something so awful, so life-changing, the only way you can cope is to jump straight into denial.
— Jane Green, Family Pictures
It’s an often repeated lie that familial bonds are the strongest. Some swear by them. Some claim an other-worldly connection with their siblings or nonsense of that order. These can be dismissed as flights of fancy. Artifices of civilization.In the wild, animals often exhibit what we would perceive as familial love. Some wild cats will grow up nurtured by their mothers, surrounded by their siblings, but should one stray from the pack for too long and attempt to rejoin, it will be summarily eaten or maimed by its ‘family.’ It’s no longer a part of them. The blood connection is irrelevant, what matters is the perception of the group.Conversely, there have been recorded instances of unfaithful wives giving birth to children from a man other than her husband. The father, oblivious to the indiscretion, loves the child as if it were his own. Would that love fade if he found out the truth?Who do you love more, your brother or your best friend? What if your brother tried to kill you, who then? Here, then, is my twentieth truth: “Do not trust in blood, trust only in yourself." In the end, that is all you have.
— C.M.  Hayden, The Stars That Form Us
What can't you bear?''This island,' Gabe says. He breathes a long pause between every word he says. 'That house you and Finn are in. People talking. The fish - goddamn fish. I'll smell like them for the rest of my life. The horses. Everything. I can't do it any more.'. . . It feels like he's confessed that he's dying of a disease I've never heard of, with symptoms I can't see.
— Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races
Tamlin’s arm tightened around me, and he kissed the top of my head. I pulled back, looking up at him.The gold in his eyes, bright with the rising sun, flickered. “What?”“My father once told me that I should let my sisters imagine a better life—a better world. And I told him that there was no such thing.” I ran my thumb over his mouth, marveling, and shook my head. “I never understood—because I couldn’t … couldn’t believe that it was even possible.” I swallowed, lowering my hand. “Until now.”His throat bobbed. His kiss that time was deep and thorough, unhurried and intent.I let the dawn creep inside me, let it grow with each movement of his lips and brush of his tongue against mine. Tears pricked beneath my closed eyes.It was the happiest moment of my life.
— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses
There's something quite special about a granny's house. Even if ten or twenty or thirty years go by, you never forget how it smells.
— Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
The word Familia did not originally signify the ideal of our modern philistine, which is a compound of sentimentality and domestic discord. Among the Romans, in the beginning, it did not even refer to the married couple and their children, but to the slaves alone. Famulus means a household slave and familia signifies the totality of slaves belonging to one individual. The expression was invented by the romans to describe a new social organism, the head of which had under him wife and children and a number of slaves, under Roman paternal power, with power of life and death over them all.
— Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
The woman who is my best friend, my teacher, my everything: Mom.
— Sandra Vischer, Unliving the Dream
Josh loved his mother, but he did not know why. Diane loved her son, and she did not care why.
— Joseph Fink, Welcome to Night Vale
Oh, my love,' she said. 'What do the only children do?''We'll never have to know.
— Ann Patchett, Commonwealth
...After hardship, God will bring ease.
— Anonymous
We too had branched off from the people who had come before us, a family that made the family that made us, and we were shining in the darkness and casting our light all around us.
— David Gianadda, Everything You Say Is Goodbye
Mollycoddling was the mother's duty; the father's lay elsewhere. As a consequence, his four older children feared and respected him, as they had been taught to do, and the love the professed to feel, had they been asked and had they answered truthfully or even had access to the truth, was of a duty-bound, obligatory kind too, a love issuing from commandment and tradition and the notion of family, not one from the tides of the heart or the unbridled, inexplicable pull of feelings. If painted, that love would take the form of a polite and manicured wash of pleasant colours, not the hurl-and-splatter of impastoed reds.
— Neel Mukherjee, The Lives of Others
I was a tourist in a bizarre land. I was home.
— Rabih Alameddine, The Hakawati
The strength of society is the family and the strength of society is the family.
— Sara Niles
POPPY (standing up to Paul): He fits me, and I don’t want to change. Not for you or anyone. I’m deeply in love with myself, and Emmett respects that...“I’m not her (Christine). I don’t have a dream to fix animal boo-boos. Loving Emmett and living close to my family are the only dreams I see as worth having.
— Bijou Hunter, Train Wreck
POPPY (standing up to Paul): I see family life as invading everyone’s privacy and saying whatever I feel and treating everyone as they’re treasured because they’re my family and thus special as compared to the rest of the world. I see a good family as loud and frantic and intrusive.
— Bijou Hunter, Train Wreck
In view of the frequent occurrence of modern domestic groups that do not consist of, or contain, an exclusive pair-bonded father and mother, I cannot see why anyone should insist that our ancestors were reared in monogamous nuclear families and that pair-bonding is more natural than other arrangements.
— Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going
POPPY: 25 December 2016 POPPY (standing up to Paul): You see family life as respecting boundaries and saying what makes people happy and treating everyone like they’re treasured but only in a sanitized way. I see family life as invading everyone’s privacy and saying whatever I feel and treating everyone as they’re treasured because they’re my family and thus special as compared to the rest of the world. I see a good family as loud and frantic and intrusive...He fits me, and I don’t want to change. Not for you or anyone. I’m deeply in love with myself, and Emmett respects that...“I’m not her (Christine). I don’t have a dream to fix animal boo-boos. Loving Emmett and living close to my family are the only dreams I see as worth having.
— Bijou Hunter, Train Wreck
A “No Excuses” mindset in your family stems directly from your personal growth. If you are not growing as a person, the first impact will affect your family.
— Farshad Asl, The "No Excuses" Mindset: A Life of Purpose, Passion, and Clarity
Don't hurt other people on the name of respecting your family, they may be wrong sometimes. Learn to listen, understand & respect everyone.
— Ridhdhesh Jivawala
A sweet friend of my Hannah's said that Christmas only makes her sad. "It's just for happy families it makes everyone else miserable."But there is a secret truth about family. Eventually you get to pick a family for yourself m. And thanks to the sticky, sweet, funny, loud, rambunctious people I chose, Christmas is my favorite time of the year.
— Ellen Stimson, Mud Season: How One Woman's Dream of Moving to Vermont, Raising Children, Chickens and Sheep, and Running the Old Country Store Pretty Much Led to One Calamity After Another
Because family and friends are the foundation of who you are, this is a realm where no excuses should exist. Give them your all without excuses.
— Farshad Asl, The "No Excuses" Mindset: A Life of Purpose, Passion, and Clarity
It is always those closest to us who can cut us the deepest.
— Ross  Turner, Midnight
When you become a parent, you become a superhero. You realize you have more strength, energy and love than is humanly possible.
— Kailin Gow, Beautiful Girl:  Modern Beauty and Beast
Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply.
— Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
They say family's first, but family is the first to get you hurt
— Chrisper Malamsha
As it was, she gave him the single most important gift a parent can give—“a sense of unconditional love that was big enough that, with all the surface disturbances of our lives, it sustained me, entirely.” People wonder about his calm and even-keeled manner, the [P]resident observed. He credited the temperament he was born with and the fact that “from a very early age, I always felt I was loved and that my mother thought I was special.
— Janny Scott, A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother
Adoption is outside. You act out what it feels like to be the one who doesn't belong. And you act it out by trying to do to others what has been done to you. It is impossible to believe anyone loves you for yourself.I never believed that my parents loved me. I tried to love them but it didn't work. It has taken me a long time to learn how to love - both the giving and the receiving. I have written about love obsessively, forensically, and I know/knew it as the highest value.I loved God of course, in the early days, and God loved me. That was something. And I loved animals and nature. And poetry. People were the problem. How do you love another person? How do you trust another person to love you?  I had no idea. I thought that love was loss. Why is the measure of love loss?
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
I can see us there still," he said, "for those were moments so intense that in a way we will be living them always, while other things are completely forgotten. Yet there is no particular story attached to them,” he said, “despite their place in the story I have just told you. That time spent swimming in the pool beneath the waterfall belongs nowhere: it is part of no sequence of events, it is only itself, in a way that nothing our life before as a family was ever itself, because it was always leading to the next thing and the next, was always contributing to our story of who we were.
— Rachel Cusk, Outline
Then, as she turned in a majestic arc for home, a beautiful sunrise appeared on the horizon, as golden and perfect as the very first ray of sun at the beginning of time.
— Samantha  Wood, The Bay of Shadows
I can see us there still," he said, "for those were moments so intense that in a way we will be living them always, while other things are completely forgotten. Yet there is no particular story attached to them," he said, "despite their place in the story I have just told you. That time spent swimming in the pool beneath the waterfall belongs nowhere: it is part of no sequence of events, it is only itself, in a way that nothing our life before as a family was ever itself, because it was always leading to the next thing and the next, was always contributing to our story of who we were.
— Rachel Cusk
Then please promise me you won’t let go of the woman you’ve become. Do whatever it is you need to in order to be happy. You have people in your corner now. I can’t promise that everything with Rowan will work out, but what I can promise is that, no matter what, there are too many hands holding on to you to let the fall be as painful as it’s been in the past.
— Jessica Prince
Chance looked up at him, her dark grey eyes out. 'I knew you were gonna be like this.''How'd you know?' Reaper said, reaching out and putting his arm around her shoulders.'I am my father's daughter, ain't I?' said Chance.Reaper smiled. 'You sure as hell you are.
— Sean Black, Deadlock
Maybe punching her enemy right in the nose wasn't the smartest way to get out of class, but it was definitely a much more entertaining way.
— Ophelia T. Starks, Nightfall Academy
I want to be so successful that one day my mom never has to buy a thing for herself again
— Chrisper Malamsha
The future belongs to those who procreate.
— Duane Alexander Miller
Does childhood really happen? Do we imagine it? Everyone remembers something else....
— Kiana Davenport, Shark Dialogues
She explains that often the people who mean the most to us have to be left behind because they cannot follow us along our destined path.
— Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past
Your family is real, but mine isn't? Real people with real feelings, but my family isn't real to you. You think. I'm a character. A story. Those women you talk about. Not real people to you. Stupid women. I'm real. I'm as real as you are. My family is real like your family.
— Bryn Greenwood, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
You can't just abandon your family because they did something horrible. You've done horrible things to them too.
— Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian
I needed to know who should get the best of my energy: my boys or a company that asked me to speak for them. I needed to know what matters. And the image of that man in his tuxedo was all I needed. You will always regret something. You will always disappoint someone. But it isn't going to be my husband and our boys. It has been, sometimes. But I'm learning. And I'm making things right.
— Shauna Niequist, Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living
Family is always a mirror. You can hide from other people, you can even hide from yourself, but your family is going to reflect what you’re doing right back at you.
— Martina Boone, Illusion
What makes me feel rich is spending time with my children, knowing we are making beautiful memories together.
— Brigitte Nicole
Growing up is like that, I suppose. The strings fall away and you're left standing on your own.
— Alan Bradley, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd
It took me a long time to realiseThat mothers are women who carry you And not necessarily in their womb.
— Stacy Morris
The black mother perceives destruction at every door, ruination at each window, and even she herself is not beyond her own suspicion. She questions whether she loves her children enough- or more terribly, does she love them too much? Do her looks cause embarrassment- or even terrifying, is she so attractive her sons begin to desire her and her daughters begin to hate her. If she is unmarried, the challenges are increased. Her singleness indicates she has rejected or has been rejected by her mate. Yet she is raising children who will become mates. Beyond her door, all authority is in the hands of people who do not look or think or act like her children. Teachers, doctors, sales, clerks, policemen, welfare workers who are white and exert control over her family’s moods, conditions and personality, yet within the home, she must display a right to rule which at any moment, by a knock at the door, or a ring in the telephone, can be exposed as false. In the face of this contradictions she must provide a blanket of stability, which warms but does not suffocate, and she must tell her children the truth about the power of white power without suggesting that it cannot be challenged.
— Maya Angelou, The Heart of a Woman
All their lives Nath had understood, better than anyone, the lexicon of their family, the things they could never truly explain to outsiders: that a book or a dress meant more than something to read or something to wear; that attention came with expectations that—like snow—drifted and settled and crushed you with their weight.
— Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You
He wanted to know all about me and my family and especially my childhood.'That's where everything starts', he'd say. 'Both heaven and hell.
— Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust
... sometimes love becomes a power game between ambitions that parents have for their children and the ambitions that children have for themselves.
— Witi Ihimaera, The Whale Rider
... the love which Kahu received from Koro Apirana was the sort that dropped off the edge of the table, like breadcrumbs after everybody else has had a big meal.
— Witi Ihimaera, The Whale Rider
The endorphin high of birth will fade, but its trace remains with you forever, its fingerprints indelible proof of love's presence and daily grandeur. You have offered up your prayer. You have vowed service to a new world and laid a bedrock of earthly faith. You have chosen your sword, your shield, and where you will fall. Whatever the morrow brings, these things, these people, will be with you always. The power of choice, of a life, a lover, a place to stand, will be there to be called upon and make fresh sense of your tangled history. More important, it will also be there when you waver, when you're lost, providing you with the elements of a new compass, encased within your heart.
— Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
Every so often a reader tells me, somewhat disappointedly, that their family doesn't have any secrets. To which I always reply that of course it does, they just don't know them yet. For where there are people living in close proximity, there will always be secrets.
— Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden
Actually, Jake said, isn't life what we make it, wherever we are, whenever we may be - wherever it is that we are?
— Heather Graham, Home in Time for Christmas
I know that not every family is a clean-cut nuclear Mom and Dad at home situation - but I think every father needs to do whatever he can to be present in the lives of his kids. If you are in a situation where you have not been - fight for it. Don’t give up till you get it. Don’t be a jerk about it - don’t “fight” mom - but “fight” whatever things tell you to just give up. Send cards, make phone calls, pay your support, and do whatever you can to be present in the lives of your children.
— Josh Hatcher, Manlihood: The 12 Pillars of Masculinity
She was wonderful; no mother could have been more wonderful. But ever after, she demanded that I should not forget it, nor cease to be grateful, nor hold an opinion different from her own, nor even, as I grew older, feel the need for any companionship but hers.
— Rosemary Sutcliff, Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection
Uncle Acton spent the whole of his working life in India, for the simple reason that he gave up work very young.
— Rosemary Sutcliff, Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection
My mother was the perfect Spartan mother. I have always been able to imagine her telling her sons to return from battle 'with their shields, or on them'. She did actually try it on my father at the start of the Second World War. He didn't take it kindly, and confided to me ruefully that he thought she rather fancied herself a Hero's Widow.
— Rosemary Sutcliff, Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection
He wanted to know all about me and my family and especially my childhood.That's where everything starts, he'd say. Both heaven and hell.
— Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust
However much he denied it, he always hoped that they'd be kinder to each other one day, like people who were grateful to survive something instead of people still fighting to survive. Wherever that small seed of hope resided, it no longer exists, and what they were to each other is what they will always be. Tethered somehow. Dawn together by a force that should've kept them close but repelled them instead.
— Jung Yun
On the line beside Describe your family, I wrote, "Bad."What is your favorite subject in school? "None."List three of your favorite activities. "Soccer, ballet, and fighting."Two of those favorite activities were lies but one of them was the truth.I am fond of fighting.
— Barbara O'Connor, Wish
My grandfather had been the ugliest, darkest, foulest, most depraved figure of my childhood, more beast than human, and I had grown up to be him, locked in the basement with my secrets as the rest of the family reveled in the petty and ordinary upstairs. Down there, I saw my black, ancient, ineluctable core exposed, like a crab forced out of its shell--dirty, vulnerable, and obscene. For the first time in my life, I was truly alone.
— Marilyn Manson, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
There are certain things we owe our little sisters.
— Claire Hennessy, Nothing Tastes As Good
I think of drug dealers like I think of my father— never really there when you want them to be.
— Kris Kidd, Down for Whatever
Twas the night before Christmas And the moon was sitting high The kids were in bed,  Kissed and snuggled in tight The gifts were all wrapped There was love in the air It only came once  So it was handled with careThe curtains were drawn The cookies were bit It was time to blow out All those candles we’d litThe kids would soon wake With laughter in their hearts We had a big day ahead And early it would startLaughter’s and squeals  Jumps on the bed  Screaming, “Get up”! “Get up!” as they fledWrappings and ribbons  Thrown everywhere“Oh, I love you Mom and Dad!”Neither did spareFamily arrives, Carolers sing Stories were told  Of childhood memories This was true loveTrue love was in the air And it only came once  So it was handled with careNow the gifts have been opened And the food is all gone The songs were all sung And the guests have gone homeIt was time to get back  To life’s normal things It was time to put away  All that the holidays bringYou'll go to your office She'll go to her room He'll reach for his game I guess I'll grab the broom Christmas had come  And Christmas had went It only comes once a year But it is time well spent
— N'Zuri Za Austin
Trust me, you will get plenty of "advice" from everyone and anyone on the best way to do things, and remember that you don't have to take any of it. Know that whatever you choose, THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU AND SUPPORT YOU THE MOST WON'T MAKE THE DAY ABOUT THEM, they'll make it about you and him, and show up to celebrate your special day regardless of what you decide to do.
— Melissa Hill, The Guest List
...because unlike some, I wasn't in line when they were handling out perfect genes.
— Melissa Hill, The Guest List
It's safe to tell us stuff, okay?" This means it's not safe to tell them anything.
— A.S. King, Ask the Passengers
I always knew what was most important to me. When I was growing up, nothing was more important than golf, but that’s the attitude of a young person who hasn’t a care in the world. Later on I figured it out. Family was first. Always. Then golf and business come after.
— Arnold Palmer, A Life Well Played: My Stories
You can only be your brother's keeper if he allows you
— Ikechukwu Izuakor
It is through the institution of families that children are brought up in an orderly manner
—  and that the knowledge of God and of His laws is handed down from generation to generation.
AMELIA: To my friends, and family: You all may be batsh*t crazy, but even if I got to choose, I’d still choose to be with you. Life is fragile, and tomorrow is never a sure thing, so thanks for sharing your lives with me.....
— Amelia Hutchins, Playing with Monsters
AMELIA: To my daughter, if you ever date anyone like the men I write, I will kick your *ss up between your ears and you will walk sideways for a month, but I’ll still love you.
— Amelia Hutchins, Playing with Monsters
Well don't demand the spotlight if you can't handle the attention.
— Melissa Hill, The Guest List
A criminal always returns home.
— Ljupka Cvetanova
Family is a fortress.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
When Miller had started working homicide, one of the things that had struck him was the surreal calm of the victims’ families. People who had just lost wives, husbands, children, and lovers. People whose lives had just been branded by violence. More often than not, they were calmly offering drinks and answering questions, making the detectives feel welcome. A civilian coming in unaware might have mistaken them for whole. It was only in the careful way they held themselves and the extra quarter second it took their eyes to focus that Miller could see how deep the damage was.
— James Corey, Leviathan ontwaakt
Remember, whoever holds the purse strings for the wedding has the control. Don't accept a cent from anyone else if possible. Then you and him will be the only ones calling the shots. All the decisionswill be yours and the rest of them will just have to go along with it.
— Melissa Hill, The Guest List
I think my family has come a long way. The sad thing is that so many haven't. So many have stayed in their own little world. Some because they don't want to leave it, others because the world around them won't let them in.
— Melina Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi
There are secrets in all families, you know.
— Jane Austen, Emma
Arleen’s children did not always have a home. They did not always have food. Arleen was not always able to offer them stability; stability cost too much. She was not always able to protect them from dangerous streets; those streets were her streets. Arleen sacrificed for her boys, fed them as best she could, clothed them with what she had. But when they wanted more than she could give, she had ways, some subtle, others not, of telling them they didn’t deserve it.
— Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
He wanted to know all about me and my family and especially my childhood."That's where everything starts," he'd say. "Both heaven and hell.
— Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust
But yeah, like everyone else in our family, they could go from zero to murderous in a fucking heartbeat.
— J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
Bad habits were all a matter of perspective, and as long as the present was viewed through the lens of the past, anyone would say he was doing a spectacular job.
— Ann Patchett, Commonwealth
As anybody with two older sisters can tell you, a closed door is like a red rag to a bull. It cannot go unchallenged.
— Alan Bradley, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd
Van Uoc felt the stab of a sad truth: she and her mother would never be as close as her mother and grandmother had been.Her mother got up, stretched her tidy, graceful frame and headed for the kitchen. Van Uoc wanted to be able to offer her some comfort, but what could she say? Her mother was right. The two of them represented an irreconcilable cultural split. Distance between them was inevitable.
— Fiona Wood, Cloudwish
The circles of shame are vicious. Painful feelings of shame help cause people to be depressed and suicidal, these in turn become shameful aspects of the self. Being angry does not necessarily cause more anger, being envious does not necessarily cause more envy (though once we envy, we can also envy someone's lack of envy), but, in our culture at least, shame (and envy and self-pity) are things to be ashamed about. The two common feelings of suicide are hopelessness and powerlessness; each is shameful, and this additional experience of shame adds pain on pain. A man who despairs because he feels his prospects of having a family are hopeless also feels he will never lose the feeling of shame over being wifeless and childless. To be powerless to change one's life in ways that others can is cause to feel ashamed of one's powerlessness.
— David L. Conroy, Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain
Nature gave you brothers and sisters and you have no right to choose who should become your relative. But the good news is that you have the right to choose your friends. You determine who to be free with and who to fire out.
— Israelmore Ayivor, Become a Better You
There is no indication that God explained to Joseph what He was doing through those many years of heartache or how the pieces would eventually fit together. He had no ways of knowing that he would eventually enjoy a triumphal reunion with his family. He was expected, as you and I are, to live out his life one day at a time in something less than complete understanding. What pleased God was Joseph’s faithfulness when nothing made sense.
— James C. Dobson, Life on the Edge: The Next Generation's Guide to a Meaningful Future
Of course the activists—not those whose thinking had become rigid, but those whose approach to revolution was imaginatively anarchic—had long ago grasped the reality which still eluded the press: we were seeing something important. We were seeing the desperate attempt of a handful of pathetically unequipped children to create a community in a social vacuum. Once we had seen these children, Ave could no longer overlook the vacuum, no longer pretend that the society’s atomization could be reversed. This was not a traditional generational rebellion. At some point between 1945 and 1967 we had somehow neglected to tell these children the rules of the game we happened to be playing. Maybe we had stopped believing in the rules ourselves, maybe we were having a failure of nerve about the game. Maybe there were just too few people around to do the telling. These were children who grew up cut loose from the web of cousins and great-aunts and family doctors and lifelong neighbors who had traditionally suggested and enforced the society’s values. They are children who have moved around a lot, San Jose, Chula Vista, here. They are less in rebellion against the society than ignorant of it, able only to feed back certain of its most publicized self-doubts, Vietnam, Saran-Wrap, diet pills, the Bomb.They feed back exactly what is given them. Because they do not believe in words—words are for “typeheads,” Chester Anderson tells them, and a thought which needs words is just one more of those ego trips—their only proficient vocabulary is in the society’s platitudes. As it happens I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language, and I am not optimistic about children who will settle for saying, to indicate that their mother and father do not live together, that they come from “a broken home.” They are sixteen, fifteen, fourteen years old, younger all the time, an army of children waiting to be given the words.
— Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
There are many different forms of family and there is in fact NO 'the' family.The basic building block of any close relationship - and thus any family - is LOVE.
— Christina Engela, All That Remains
Those close to [Patricia Highsmith], particularly her family, often commented on how Highsmith's vision of reality was a warped one. In April 1947, she transcribed into her notebook what was, presumably, a real dialogue between herself and her mother, in which Mary accused her of not facing the world. Highsmith replied that she did indeed view the world 'sideways, but since the world faces reality sideways, sideways is the only way the world can be looked at in true perspective.' The problem, Highsmith said, was that her psychic optics were different to those around her, but if that was the case, her mother replied, then she should equip herself with a pair of new spectacles. Highsmith was not convinced. 'Then I need a new birth,' she concluded.
— Andrew Wilson, Patricia Highsmith, Ζωή στο σκοτάδι
Her family... Love and involvement brought joy, but as well could become a hideously heavy millstone slung about one's neck. And the worst was that she felt useless because there was not a mortal thing she could do to help resolve their problems.
— Rosamunde Pilcher, September
I’m getting off the boat at Coconut Grove. It’s six and you’re not on the dock. I finish up, and start walking home, thinking you’re tied up making dinner, and then I see you and Ant hurrying down the promenade. He is running and you’re running after him. You’re wearing a yellow dress. He jumps on me, and you stop shyly, and I say to you, come on, tadpole, show me what you got, and you laugh and run and jump into my arms. Such a good memory.I love you, babe.
— Paullina Simons, The Summer Garden
But when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too.
— Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here
Everybody wants a perfect face, which able to attract others, but without perfect teeth you can’t show yourself to others but everything is possible if you have strong desire to change your look,So Cal Dental care presents Cosmetic Dentistry treatment in North Hollywood.
— So Cal dental
Every generation has its defining challenge. Ours is the systematic annihilation of the biblical family."~ Doug Phillips
— Anna Sofia Botkin, So Much More
Always make your familial environment a safe and inviting place.
— Asa Don Brown
She'd always been comforted by how many words there were in the English language -- more than a million. With so many words surely anything could be said, everything could be under
— Fiona Wood, Cloudwish
She started to speak, but then stopped. Anything she could think of to say seemed a mistake. In fact, speech in general seemed a mistake. It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work. from Back When We Were Grownups.
— Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups
By definition, though, we are family. And in difficult times-- times like these-- despite our differences, we stand together as family.
— Stephen King
We arrived from New York after a daylong slog through airports and planes and traffic. It was 10: 00 p.m. local time, but my body had no idea if it was night or day. Krishna was hungry, so I found some leftover dosa batter in the kitchen and started making one for her. Next thing I knew, my grandmother was by my side, commandeering the griddle. “Let me do it,” she said. “You don’t know where anything is.” I insisted, but she won, even though by then she cooked with only one arm, the other still paralyzed from the stroke. Then my aunt Papu came in and yelped, “You’re making your grandma cook?” She was appalled. “It’s ten at night!” Papu took over, my grandmother wouldn’t leave, and my uncle Ravi entered the fray. “Look at you,” he said. “You’re supposed to be this famous food person and you’re making these women cook at ten o’clock!” I quickly remembered how it felt to live with so many people. Every move you make is scrutinized. You get up and it’s “Where are you going?” You come back and it’s “Why are you wearing that blouse? I like the other one better.” You walk outside and someone calls from the veranda, “Don’t go that way, there’s too much sun!” It was exasperating and suffocating and God, I had missed it.
— Padma Lakshmi, Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir
One of the problems of the vacation is money, father.”“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about a thing like that at your age.”“You see, I’ve run rather short.”“Yes?” said my father without any sound of interest.“In fact I don’t quite know how I’m going to get through the next two months.”“Well, I’m the worst person to come to for advice. I’ve never been ‘short’ as you so painfully call it. And yet what else could you say? Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stony-broke?” (Snuffle.) “On the rocks? In Queer Street? Let us say you are in Queer Street and leave it at that. Your grandfather once said to me, ‘Live within your means, but if you do get into difficulties, come to me. Don’t go to the Jews.
— Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
I can be anything I want to be. Just wait and you will see. Only time will tell what I will be.
— Jason J. Greenaway, My Daddy Loves Me: Just the Way I Was Made to Be
--and yet, in my heart, I always knew we loved each other, a part of me understanding that the passion with which we hurt each other came from something strong enough to withstand the blows we inflicted. Looking back, I guess I always felt that we would have time to work things out eventually, not imagining what was to come; that we would one day have to cut all ties and never speak again.
— Camilla Way, Watching Edie