c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Mommy, Daddy, what are they doing?” a little girl asked, watching the bonobos play. Her forehead and palms were pressed against the glass, as if she thought she could break on through to the other side and join them if only she pushed hard enough.“Looks like they need private time!” her father barked back, steering the girl away from the window as her mother brightly proposed, “Let’s go see the hippos!” Not everybody is quite ready for the Bonobo Way, and far be it from me to push it on anyone, especially some stressed-out parents at the zoo. On the other hand, maybe they’re more ready than they realize. Ready or not, its moment has come. The time is now for human beings to step up to the plate and protect our kissing cousins from extinction, as well as learn as much as we can from them about our noblest and kinkiest characteristics, our capacity for peace (even world peace) through pleasure, more satisfying relationships, better communication, hotter sex and deeper love.
— Susan Block, The Bonobo Way
Our parents are always an important part of our inner life.
— Eraldo Banovac
Why aren't you girls out stealing hubcaps or shoplifting like normal children?
— Daniel Clowes, Ghost World
Eventually, many years later, I came to see him the way everyone else saw him—a nice guy who, despite all the damage he did to us, wasn’t a bad man, not inherently bad, anyway. He just wasn’t very bright, and was in over his head on almost every level of life. He was capable of only so much and not a drop more, and because he seemed so harmless and lost, people not only liked him, they protected him.  My mother, despite her poverty, left the opposite impression. She left no doubt that she was psychologically tough and mentally sharp, and because of that the Wozniaks disliked her.  And that was another difference between my mother and father. My father was a whiner, a complainer, a perpetually unhappy man unable to comprehend the simple fact that sometimes life is unfair. My mother never complained, and yet her poverty-stricken life was miserable. She never carried on about the early death of her raging alcoholic mother, or the father who raped her, or of a diet dictated by the restrictions of food stamps.
— John William Tuohy, No Time to Say Goodbye: A Memoir of a Life in Foster Care
Going home means going back in time. It's not a trip you care to take alone, and anyway, isn't that the main reason to take a mate? So you have an ally in the civil war against your parents?
— Diana Joseph, I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing But True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog
They were no better than common thieves. They stole our childhood. But even with that, I was heartbroken that I would not know the Wozniaks anymore, the only people who came close to being parents to me. I would be conscious of their absence for the rest of my life. I needed them. You know, if you think about it, we all need each other. But even with all of the evidence against the Wozniaks, I had conflicted emotions about them, then and now. They were the closest I had to a real family and real parents. But now I was bankrupt of any feelings at all towards them at all.  I felt then, and feel now, a great sense of loss. I felt as if I were burying them. when I never really had them to lose in the first place. Disillusioned is probably a better word. In fact the very definition of disillusionment is a sense of loss for something you never had. When you are disillusioned and disappointed enough times, you stop hoping. That’s what happens to many foster kids. We become loners, not because we enjoy the solitude, but because we let people into our lives and they disappoint us. So we close up and travel alone. Even in a crowd, we’re alone. Because I survived, I was one of the lucky ones. Why is it so hard to articulate love, yet so easy to express disappointment?
— John William Tuohy, No Time to Say Goodbye: A Memoir of a Life in Foster Care
In short, Nance, even was you going to the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow - and grow, maybe, to hate us, for keeping you from your fate.
— Sarah Waters
Hugo, we are taught to be advanced in every form from academically to socially. I think our parents fucked it up, taking that advancement for granted. They wanted us to grow up with everything and in return of that we became spoiled.
— Chelsea Ballinger, My Silent Hero
The best aunts aren't substitute parents, they're co-conspirators.
— Daryl Gregory, Harrison Squared
Disappointment is part of parenthood, Jasper. The trick is learnin' to love your kids even when they disappoint you.
— Barry Lyga
The penguins that spent most of their time fighting were the ones with no chicks...It's like they're supposed to be taking care of their chicks. But because they don't have any, they have nothing to do with all their energy. So they just pick fights.
— Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette
What are you doing?" my mom asked. One side of her mouth curled up."I'm trying to move that cup."My parents laughed. I concentrated on the coffee cup, but it didn't budge."I guess I'll have to work on this telekinesis thing. It'll come in handy when Ben is hogging the TV remote and forcing me to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the fifty-millionth time.
— Michelle K. Pickett, Milayna
You're being parental', I said. 'Go find that squid'.
— Daryl Gregory, Harrison Squared
When the Indians saw us whipping our children, they thought at first that we must hate our children, but then they thought, no, no one can hate his child. They decided it must be a religious rite, to make the child hate this world and long for the next. We're a strange vicious people.
— Isabel Miller, Patience & Sarah
It's easy for parents to pull the strings that make one dance...after all, they are the ones who tied those strings in the first place
— Mercedes Lackey
I think everyone's parents have secrets. You just have to know where to look for them.
— Lemony Snicket, The Slippery Slope
There are all these things my mother is good for that my father isn't, and all these things my father is good for that my mother isn't, and if only they could work out their differences, or keep the dim of discord to a minimum, I could have two whole parents.
— Elizabeth Wurtzel
Children see beauty in everything.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Leesha knew from experience that when parents don't parent, kids grow up fast.
— Cinda Williams Chima, The Sorcerer Heir
That's such bullshit, Mythology repeated by parents because it lets them force their kids into sports and push them too hard by pretending that in the end it will pay off with the holy scholarship. You know how many kids get a free ride? Hardly any. Like, maybe fourteen.' -Finn (165)
— Laurie Halse Anderson, The Impossible Knife of Memory
Of course, to be fair, that was a parent's job. The world was so full of sharp bends that if they didn't put a few twists in you, you wouldn't stand a chance of fitting in.
— Terry Pratchett
Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you still had your mother or father at your back, you’d be okay.
— Jojo Moyes, One Plus One
There was no point in telling my father. He'd never let me quit after only one day. He couldn't help me and he'd make some terrible blunder if he tried. Parents are too innocent for the Boschian landscapes of middle school.
— Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
From something as simple as what goes in to a good meatloaf to the not so simple - religion, culture, how you should vote, every damn thing you think or believe, your reactions, your behavior - were partially shaped by who and what your parents were.
— Sandra Brown, Deadline
She started dialing his cell, then hung up and tried the landline -- maybe Margaret was a better bet to pick up; their parents' generation still felt morally obligated to answer phones.
— Rainbow Rowell, Landline
This was the danger of sharing your dreams with your parents. If you told them you wanted to learn to play the guitar, all they heard you say was, “I want to learn to play the guitar,” and then they found some practical, convenient, cheap way, often involving a church basement, for you to do it. But Hector had not come up with any plan of his own. And owning a guitar seemed like an important stepping stone on the way to being a guitar player. So he pawned his soul and said he would take the lessons from the Presbyterian youth minister. What the hell, he thought. Or heck, he thought. What the heck.
— Lynne Rae Perkins, Criss Cross
Many a man has known that startling instant in which Dan Cupid, that busy young rascal, took things in hand, and told him that his baby girl was not a baby girl now, and was about to fly away from him. It is both a happy and a sad thrill that shoots through a man at such an instant. Happy and joyous at his girl’s arrival at maturity; sad, as it brings to mind that awkward fact that his own youth is now but a myth; and that his scalp is showing vacant spots. His baby girl in a bridal gown! His baby girl a Matron! His baby girl proudly placing a grandchild in his lap!! It’s an impossibility!! But this big world is full of this kind of impossibility, and will stay so as long as Man lasts.
— Ernest Vincent Wright, Gadsby
There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow - that, in short, we are all going.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
He had been searching for it his entire life. He had devoted himself to poetry to find it. Now, in the middle of his life, he found it. It was in the face of the love of his life, his daughter. She who had never blushed before, now blushed. And in that blushing, he knew, was the existence of God. That was the day her father learned what God was. God was pure beauty, God was his daughter’s face when she blushed.
— Roman Payne
That's the thing about parents. They ask what you think, but they don't really care, or at least they don't care enough to let it affect the outcome.
— Peter Monn, The Before Now and After Then
If only parents would listen! If only they would let us talk instead of forever and eternally and continuously harping and preaching and nagging and correcting and yacking, yacking, yacking! But they won’t listen! They simply won’t or can’t or don’t want to listen, and we kids keep winding up back in the same old frustrating, lost, lonely corner with no one to relate to either verbally or physically.
— Anonymous, Go Ask Alice
Maybe I was crazy to consider it, but I’d always hoped that if I were a good enough girl, if I did everything right, if I said the right things or said nothing at all—I thought my parents would change their minds. I thought they would finally listen when I tried to talk. I thought they would give me a chance. I thought they might finally love me. I always had that stupid hope.
— Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me
Every time, he breaks your hearts. And every time, he expects me to pick up the pieces.
— Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park
I look at him and realize, maybe I overreacted. Maybe more than once.
— Lisa Schroeder, Chasing Brooklyn
All that shameless groveling. no wonder 'merapa wanted him to go. This was his punishment, a conclusion clearer than anything he'd witnessed since leaving Mira III. Would his father do that? of course he would. That's what parents were for.
— Marcha A. Fox, Beyond the Hidden Sky
RETURN TO TENDEROur aging parents deserve the same loving care they gave us in infancyKamil Ali
— Kamil Ali, Profound Vers-A-Tales
The return to the "Father from whom all fatherhood takes its name" allows me to let my dad be no less than the good, loving, but limited human being he is, and to let my heavenly Father be the God whose unlimited, unconditional love melts away all resentments and anger and makes me free to love beyond the need to please or find approval.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming
Every human relationship begins with a coincidence. Even the most fundamental relationship - that of parent and child - begins entirely with a coincidence. The child is produced by whatever serendipity brought its parents together, and the fact that the child was born to its particular parents instead of to another couple is pure happenstance. Thus, children have no choice over the relationship that is most important to their existence.By contrast, friends and lovers choose each other, but even these choices are reactions to whatever random coincidence made the resulting relationship possible.
— Zack Love, Sex in the Title: A Comedy about Dating, Sex, and Romance in NYC
It made a big difference in my life to grow up with a dad who wasn't afraid of how great my mom was.
— Steve Maraboli
And what this is, I realize, is life. I don't want it. I want my parents and I have for weeks. I've been trying to claw my way back to them, and now I am so close and he is telling me not to.
— Veronica Roth, Insurgent
I know I'm a Third, I know it, if you want I'll go away so you don't have to be embarrassed in front of everybody, I'm sorry I lost the monitor and now you have three kids and no obvious explanation, so inconvenient for you, I'm sorry sorry sorry.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
My grandfather was a duck trapperHe could do it with just dragnets and ropesMy grandmother could sew new dresses out of old clothI don't know if they had any dreams or hopesI had 'em once though, I suppose, to go alongWith all the ring-dancin' Christmas carols on all of the Christmas evesI left all my dreams and hopesBuried under tobacco leaves
— Bob Dylan, Lyrics: 1962-2001
I couldn't keep myself from wondering how on earth I got to have such demented parents".
— Bella Forrest, A Shadow of Light
onething i have learnt is that parents should treat their kids in a way they would love in return, because growing up litteraly makes you a kid again. you will get it too.
— Mohlalefi j motsima
The outcome of insane parents is either a murderer or an intellectual.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
Once upon a time, there was a generation of parents who were certain that Elvis Presley's unashamed hip-swivellingvwas most certainly the end of society.
— Charlie Caruso, Understanding y
Two imbecile parents, whether related or not, have only imbecile offspring.
— Charles Benedict Davenport, Eugenics, the Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding
Of course, some families cannot be saved and their children cannot be returned. Yet, even then, their love for each other must be worth something.
— Andrew Bridge, Hope's Boy
Sonia lives her life fully. If she dies tomorrow, she'll die happy. If she lives the way you want her to live, she'll die miserable. So leave her alone, okay?
— Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World
You can't blame her,' said Amit. 'After a life so full of tragedy anyone would become hard.''What tragedy?' asked Mrs. Chatterji.'Well, when she was four,' said Amit, 'her mother slapped her--it was quite traumatic--and then things went on in that vein. When she was twelve she came in second in an exam...It hardens you.
— Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
At a certain age our parents offhandedly start telling us things we’ve never heard before, about themselves and their families, their upbringing and history. They’re turning their lives into stories, trying to make sense of them in retrospect and pass them on while there’s still time. You begin, embarrassingly belatedly, to see them as people with lives long preceding your own.
— Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing
Some of our parents were always on our side. Some of our parents chose to banish us rather than see us for who we were. And some of our parents, when they found out we were sick, stopped being dragons and became dragonslayers instead. Sometimes that’s what it takes—the final battle. But it should take much, much less than that.
— David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing
My father had a lifelong terror, phobia whatever, about hospitals. Makes a lot of sense in hindsight. He was so scared of doctors, he passed that on to me. That's what parents exist for: to pass their phobias on generation to generation.
— Jackie Kay, Trumpet
He has little hope that university, when he gets there next year, will be any different. Like right now, all these pupils taking notes as if their life depended on it. All for what? he wants to shout. To get into the top university, so that you can somehow convince yourself you are better than the great unwashed? So that your parents can convince themselves that they are better parents than the great unwashed? So that Mum and Dad’s fourteen-hour days at the office, paying for a fucking private education you never asked for, wasn’t just a pathetic waste of a life?
— Tabitha Suzuma, Hurt
A mother is the person who takes care of you when you're sick. The one who holds you when you're afraid. The one who follows the bus to school on the first day to make sure you made it okay. I have only one mother, Nana; he just happens to be my father, too.
— Kat Attalla, Homeward Bound
Patients are almost always preceded by their parents, because no matter how fast an ambulance can drive, terrified parents can drive faster.
— John Green, Double On-Call and Other Stories
When we are very young, our parents inadvertently program us to be what we eventually become. ~ Peggy Toney Horton
— Peggy Toney Horton, Somewhere in Heaven My Mother is Smiling
The parents have a right to say that no teacher paid by their money shall rob their children of faith in God and send them back to their homes skeptical, or infidels, or agnostics, or atheists.
— William Jennings Bryan
It dawned on him—as it hadn’t before; he was dense, he was slow—that his parents were five hundred miles away. They could make him come home, they could refuse to pay the portion of his tuition they’d agreed to pay, but they couldn’t see his jeans. “Understood,” he said.
— Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
When we are very young, our parents inadvertently program us to be what we eventually become.
— Peggy Toney Horton, Somewhere in Heaven My Mother is Smiling
I don't think it matters how many parents you've got, as long as those who are around make their presence a good one.
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
There is nothing so difficult to arrive at as the nature and personality of one's parents. Death, about which so much mystery is made,is perhaps no mystery at all. But the history of one's parents has to be pieced together from fragments, their motives and characters guessed at, and the truth about them remains deeply buried, like a boulder that projects one small surface above the level of smooth lawn, and when you come to dig around it, it proves to be too large ever to move, though each year's frost forces it up a little higher.
— William Maxwell, Time Will Darken It
My mother is the antithesis of a typical Jewish mother, she is very soft-spoken and takes more naps that a cat. As a result, I've always longed for someone to really annoy the shit out of me.
— Chelsea Handler, My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
When her mother combed Harriet's hair, she said that the woods were disgustingly muddy and mosquito-ridden. During her history unit on pioneers, her father bashfully admitted that he couldn't pitch a tent, barbeque, or fight off bears in a forest. They both agreed that such a place was unsafe. Hotels were better.
— Kimberly Karalius, Pocket Forest
Becky --" he begins, and there's a tiny intake of breath around the churchyard. "Will you--" "Yes! Yeee-esssss!" I hear the joyful sound ripping through the churchyard before I even realize I've opened my mouth. I'm so charged up with emotion, my voice doesn't even sound like mine. In fact, it sounds more like...Mum.I don't believe it.
— Sophie Kinsella, Shopaholic Ties the Knot
I don't think it matters how many parents you've got, so long as the ones who are around make their presence in a long way.
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Nothing worse... nothing worse that to be stuck somewhere with some married a-hole and have to listen to him tell you about his f***in' kids... Let me tell ya something, folks... nobody cares about your children, okay?" Nobody cares about your children. I speak for everyone. I've been appointed by the rest of the group to inform you we don't care about your children – that's why they're your children, so you can care about them and we don't have to bother.
— George Carlin
Aw, man. I’d just shot an angel in the face.I made my way into the foyer and sat down on the stairs. I glanced up at the big old grandfather clock. It was going on ten. My folks would be home soon.“How was your evening, honey?”“Killed an angel.”“Well, isn’t that nice.”That wasn’t happening. Daddy never liked guns in the first place, Mother just pretended to. I was so grounded.
— Adrienne Kress, Outcast
I want my father to be just my father, the way he has always been, not a separate person with an earlier, mythological life of his own. Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
— Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye
This is what I know about my parents. They spent the next several years trying to forget each other, and me.
— Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina
I never wanted to find my birth parents - if one set of parents felt like a misfortune, two sets would be self-destructive...I had no idea that you could like your parents or that they could love you enough to let you be yourself.
— Jeanette Winterson
After I lie there for a while, I realize that Dad isn't every going to do anything but be there to drive us home from the airport. And cook. And if I want something bigger to change, it's up to me. I'm scared shitless, yes. I'm doubtful, yes. But I'm angry. Angry that I am doing this because Dad can't. But then I sniff breakfast, and I know that Dad is doing what he can.
— A.S. King, Everybody Sees the Ants
Both my parents are therapists, which means that I am really goddamned well adjusted.
— John Green, Paper Towns
Every home is a university and the parents are the teachers.
— Mahatma Gandhi, The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi
First, I'm not getting married, so you can forget the wife. Second, if I was insane enough to get married, I wouldn't have kids. Third, if I was insane enough to get married and have kids, it would be a cold day in hell I'd let you babysit.
— Jennifer Crusie, Bet Me
The problem with parents is that they're adults.
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, He Forgot to Say Goodbye
It's quite sad that so many children go through life unsure whether their parents love them or not.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman
Some of the things I hated my parents for when I was younger are the same things I love my parents for now that I'm older.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Above all, staring at my old bedroom ceiling, I feel safe. Cocooned from the world; wrapped up in cotton wool. No one can get me here. No one even knows I'm here. I won't get any nasty letters and I won't get any nasty phone calls and I won't get any nasty visitors. It's like a sanctuary. I feel as if I'm fifteen again, with nothing to worry about but my Homework. (And I haven't even got any of that.)
— Sophie Kinsella, Confessions of a Shopaholic
Why shouldn't Mom trust me, Dad" Why are you so determined to make me out to be the bad guy all the time?" I stared at the side of his face, willing him to make eye contact. He didn't. "I've been doing really good late and you don't even care.""Yet you still managed to get into trouble tonight," he said."You have no idea what happened tonight," I said, my voice ratcheting up a notch. "All you know is that, because I was involved, I'm somehow guilty of something. You could at least pretend to care, you know. You could at least try to understand."Dad gave a sardonic little laugh. "I'll tell you what I understand," he said. "I understand that when you're left to your own devices you get into trouble, that's what I understand. I understand I was trying to have a happy, restful evening with Briley and once again you screwed it up.
— Jennifer Brown, Hate List
Reading Chip's college orientation materials, Alfred had been struck by the sentence New England winters can be very cold. The curtains he'd bought at Sears were of a plasticized brown-and-pink fabric with a backing of foam rubber. They were heavy and bulky and stiff. "You'll appreciate these on a cold night," he told Chip. "You'll be surprised how much they cut down drafts." But Chip's freshman roommate was a prep-school product named Roan McCorkle who would soon be leaving thumbprints, in what appeared to be Vaseline, on the fifth-grade photo of Denise. Roan laughed at the curtains and Chip laughed, too. He put them back in the box and stowed the box in the basement of the dorm and let it gather mold there for the next four years. He had nothing against the curtains personally. They were simply curtains and they wanted no more than what any curtains wanted - to hang well, to exclude light to the best of their ability, to be neither too small nor too large for the window that it was their task in life to cover; to be pulled this way in the evening and that way in the morning; to stir in the breezes that came before rain on a summer night; to be much used and little noticed. There were numberless hospitals and retirement homes and budget motels, not just in the Midwest but in the East as well, where these particularly brown rubber-backed curtains could have had a long and useful life. It wasn't their fault that they didn't belong in a dorm room. They'd betrayed no urge to rise above their station; their material and patterning contained not a hint of unseemly social ambition. They were what they were. If anything, when he finally dug them out of the eve of graduation, their virginal pinkish folds turned out to be rather less plasticized and homely and Sears-like than he remembered. They were nowhere near as shameful as he'd thought.
— Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
I couldn't make myself imagine Dad holding some creamy-faced baby, cooing at it, telling it he loved it. Taking it to baseball games. Living some life he'd probably consider his 'real life,' the one he deserved rather than the one he got.
— Jennifer Brown, Hate List
Half of teachers leave the profession within their first four years, and kids with behaviour challenges and their parents are cited as one of the major reasons.
— Ross W. Greene, Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them
Parents are the most precious gift given by the god. We should take care of it.
— ciril cyriac
Damn! - I'd rather walk into something of my own accord than to be frogmarched into it.""So it says here in the file. James Mowry, twenty-six, restless and pigheaded. Can be trusted to do anything at all - provided the alternative is worse.""You sound like my father. Did he tell you that?""The Service does not reveal its sources of information.
— Eric Frank Russell, Wasp
[E]verywhere I'm looking at kids, adults mostly don't seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don't want to actually play with them, they'd rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there's a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn't even hear.
— Emma Donoghue, Room
I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won't grow up with an aching void in them--like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never be filled, and one goes around all one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it.
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh
exemplar, n.It's always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done.You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath.
— David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary
I'm glad you were both here," I finally manage, thinking how strange it is to be standing with the two people who made you, something most kids take for granted every day of their lives.
— Emily Giffin, Where We Belong
My parents are great listenersWhich is why I never tell them anything
— Sonya Sones, What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know
She hated being a nobody and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don't really have any choice.
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
It’s a bit burned,” my mother would say apologetically at every meal, presenting you with a piece of meat that looked like something — a much-loved pet perhaps — salvaged from a tragic house fire. “But I think I scraped off most of the burned part,” she would add, overlooking that this included every bit of it that had once been flesh. Happily, all this suited my father. His palate only responded to two tastes - burned and ice cream — so everything suited him so long as it was sufficiently dark and not too startlingly flavorful. Theirs truly was a marriage made in heaven, for no one could burn food like my mother or eat it like my dad.
— Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat.
— Anna Quindlen, One True Thing
It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder, and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge.
— Phyllis Diller
He winced at her efforts to mollify him. Why didn't she say she was disgusted with his behaviour, with his long absence, his infrequent superficial letters? And if she did say it - would he defend himself? Would he give reasons, try to explain how meaningless every endeavour seemed to him? No. For then she would start crying again, he would tell her to stop being silly, she would ask for details, and he would tell her to mind her own business.
— Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
You're perfect. To me you are. You always will be. When you're small you think that about your parents. When you're old, you think that about your kids. You'll see.
— Cristina Alger, The Darlings
Try to find the nicest phrases and words while talking to your parents and be creative because whatever you say, it is not enough
— عبد الكريم بكار
We have fallen upon evil times and the world has waxed very old and wicked. Politics are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their parents.
— King Naram-Sin of Chaldea 3800 B.C. inscription found on an ancient tablet in a Constantinople meseu
Never feel like you need to visit him, ever?" "I see him every morning in the mirror. I think of him as the ghost version of me. And who needs to visit your own ghost?
— Adele Griffin, All You Never Wanted
After having so nobly disentangled themselves from the shackles of Parental Authority, by a Clandestine Marriage, they were determined never to forfeit the good opinion they had gained in the World, in so doing, by accepting any proposals of reconciliation that might be offered them by their Fathers – to their farther trial of their noble independence however they never were exposed.
— Jane Austen, Love and Friendship
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
— Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack
And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
— George Orwell, 1984
A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
Sometimes, the biggest secrets you can only tell a stranger.
— Michelle Hodkin, The Evolution of Mara Dyer
Fred and George, however, found all this very funny. They went out oftheir way to march ahead of Harry down the corridors, shouting, "Make way forthe Heir of Slytherin, seriously evil wizard coming through ......Percy was deeply disapproving of this behavior."It is not a laughing matter," he said coldly."Oh, get out of the way, Percy," said Fred. "Harry's in a hurry.""Yeah, he's off to the Chamber of Secrets for a cup of tea with his fangedservant," said George, chortling.Ginny didn't find it amusing either."Oh, don't," she wailed every time Fred asked Harry loudly who he wasplanning to attack next, or when George pretended to ward Harry off with a largeclove of garlic when they met.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
I've learned that we're all entitled to have our secrets.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
I feel bare. I didn't realize I wore my secrets as armor until they were gone and now everyone sees me as I really am.
— Veronica Roth, Insurgent
Photography is all about secrets. The secrets we all have and will never tell.
— Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter
The best secrets are the most twisted
— Sara Shepard, Twisted
Everybody sees me as this sullen and insecure little thing. Those are just the sides of me that I feel necessary to show because no one else seems to be showing them.
— Fiona Apple
That's the thing about flying: You could talk to someone for hours and never even know his name, share your deepest secrets and then never see them again.
— Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
Sometimes, loyalty gets in the way of what you want to do. Sometimes, it’s not your secret to tell.
— Stephenie Meyer, New Moon
Don't you ever want to have just one thing that no one else knows about, so no one can ruin it for you?
— Leila Sales, This Song Will Save Your Life
If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
All families have their secrets, most people would never know them, but they know there are spaces, gaps where the answers should be, where someone should have sat, where someone used to be. A name that is never uttered, or uttered just once and never again. We all have our secrets.
— Cecelia Ahern, The Book of Tomorrow
Reader: Dear Mr. Snicket, What is the best way to keep a secret? Lemony Snicket : Tell it to everyone you know, but pretend you are kidding.
— Lemony Snicket
The conclusion I have reached is that, above all, dogs are witnesses. They are allowed access to our most private moments. They are there when we think we are alone. Think of what they could tell us. They sit on the laps of presidents. They see acts of love and violence, quarrels and feuds, and the secret play of children. If they could tell us everything they have seen, all of the gaps of our lives would stitch themselves together.
— Carolyn  Parkhurst, The Dogs of Babel
I want you to remember what was good in me, not what was most awful. The people you love should be allowed to keep their worst to themselves.
— Joe Hill, Horns
All the secrets of the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight.
— Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Some secrets are meant to be known- but once known you can never forget them.
— Pseudonymous Bosch, The Name of This Book Is Secret
The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down.
— Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
That, my dear, is what makes a character interesting, their secrets.
— Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden
THE LUXE IS . . .Pretty girls in pretty dresses, partying until dawn.Irresistible boys with mischievous smiles and dangerous intentions.White lies, dark secrets, and scandalous hookups.This is Manhattan in 1899.
— Anna Godbersen
Once exposed, a secret loses all its power.
— Ann Aguirre, Grimspace
I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.
— Brian Andreas, Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas
Because this is what I believe - that second chances are stronger than secrets. You can let secrets go. But a second chance? You don't let that pass you by.
— Daisy Whitney, When You Were Here
I know a secret,and secrets breed paranoia.
— Simon Holt, The Devouring
Some secrets are better left at that -as secrets.
— Candace Bushnell, One Fifth Avenue
He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people.
— Anton Chekhov, The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904
Secrets...are the very root of cool.
— William Gibson, Spook Country
Secrets have a way of making themselves felt, even before you know there's a secret.
— Jean Ferris, Once Upon a Marigold
The hell with your secrets,” shouted Bonnie.“Language, language! How about this: One of you has kept a secret alltheir life, and is doing so even now. One of you is a murderer—and I amnot speaking of a vampire, or a mercy killing, or anything like that. Andthen there is the question of the true identity of Sage—good luck on yourresearch there!One of you has already had their memory erased—and I don’t meanDamon or Stefan. And what about the secret, stolen kiss? And then there isthe question of what happened the night of the motel, that it seems that nobodybut Elena can recall. You might ask her sometime about her theories aboutCamelot.
— L.J. Smith, Shadow Souls
But the aspect of secrets is they leak out. If they didn't leak, they wouldn't be interesting.
— CLAMP
Some secrets are like fossils and the stone has become too heavy to turn over.
— Delphine de Vigan, No and Me
We are bound by the secrets we share.
— Zoë Heller, What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]
A miserable collection of little secrets, that's all any of us is. 
— Guillaume Musso, Seras-tu là?
There are certain things in a man's past which he does not divulge to everybody but, perhaps, only to his friends. Again there are certain things he will not divulge even to his friends; he will divulge them perhaps only to himself, and that, too, as a secret. But, finally, there are things which he is afraid to divulge even to himself, and every decent man has quite an accumulation of such things in his mind. I can put it even this way: the more decent a man is, the larger will the number of such things be.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
Nothing Stays Secret Forever
— Jennifer R.  Hubbard
We children of schizophrenics are the great secret keepers, the ones who don't want you to think that anything is wrong.
— Mira Bartok, The Memory Palace
She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.
— Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.
— Don DeLillo, Point Omega
I can’t reveal the mystery to either saint or sinner
—  I can’t state at length what I’ve said curtly
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that can be given a name.
— George Orwell, 1984
Secrets are like plants. They can stay buried deep in the earth for a long time, but eventually they'll send up shoots and give themselves away. They have to. It's their nature. Just a tiny green stem at first. Which slowly, insidiously grows taller, stronger, unfolding itself, until there it is. A big fat secret, right in front of your face; a fully bloomed flower perfumed with the scent of deception.
— Judy Reene Singer, Still Life With Elephant
Secrets could never be rushed. They had to come of their own accord, on their own schedule. That way ,when they came , the offered themselves as a gift.
— Donna Jo Napoli, Bound
There is very seldom any true secret.
— Diana Wynne Jones, Deep Secret
There is something about a closet that makes a skeleton terribly restless.
— John Barrymore
The time for lies and secrets is over," she meowed. "The truth must come out. Starclan was wrong not to tell you who you were a long time ago.
— Erin Hunter
You are trying to lure us into revealing information you're not entitled to? With chocolate and wine? Are you amateurs?
— Moira J. Moore, Heroes at Odds
Now I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize.
— Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter
She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like wine, or like a first breath of freedom.
— Kate Chopin, The Awakening
For the righteous, the revelation is a joyous event, the realization of a divine truth. But for the wicked, revelations can be far more terrifying, when dark secrets are exposed and sinners are punished for their trespasses.
— Emily Thorne
For I did not want him to see, or to question me, for here contains already secrets, and my secrets are my fortune and my sanity.
— Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture
It's human to have a secret, but it's just as human to reveal it sooner or later.
— Philip Roth
There are marvelous sea creatures whose existences can be viewed only within the deep blue sea, and similarly we all have dear secrets that can be spoken only in the habitat of the heart.
— Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence
Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret.
— Jean de La Fontaine
Secrets had an immense attraction to him, because he never could keep one, and he enjoyed the sort of unhallowed thrill he experienced when he went and told another animal, after having faithfully promised not to.
— Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
We can always find each other, we girls with secrets.
— Crystal Renn, Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition, and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves
You have two kinds of secrets. The ones only you know. The ones only you don't.
— James Richardson
I don't think secrets agree with me, I feel rumpled up in mind since you told me that…
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Dey's some things I don't got to be told. I kin read them in folks' eyes.
— Eugene O'Neill, The Emperor Jones
From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few. 
— John Updike
Secrets aren't secret. They're just hidden treasures, waiting to be exploited.
— Stephen White, Dry Ice
The value of secrets is ever fluctuating although ladies who have been in society for a long time learn that a secret kept can be worth more than a secret told.
— Anna Godbersen, Rumors
Maybe all of us at Hailsam had little secrets like that -- little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone without fears and longing.
— Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Lying in bed, half-covered by the blankets, I would drowsily ask why he had come to my door that night long ago. It had become a ritual for us, as it does for all lovers: where, when, why? remember...I understand even old people rehearse their private religion of how they first loved, most guarded of secrets. And he would answer, sleep blurring his words, "Because I had to." The question and the answer were always the same. Why? Because I had to.
— Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra
The secrets of the universe aren't really secrets. It's just that humanity is too subjugated by their blissful ignorance to ask the right questions. When you have all of the answers, but are unable to ask any questions to them, then all you have are secrets.
— Lionel Suggs
If I guess your secret, will you tell me if I'm right?" His father laughed but didn't answer.
— Robert Liparulo, House of Dark Shadows
I do not tell her about how much I look forward to going to the Wright barn. How those couple of hours in his studio feel like an escape, a refuge. Nor do I tell Rachel that I think Damian has the most beautiful hands I've ever seen, that he walks like a cat, that he has the clearest eyes, which seem able to see absolutely everything about me. That he seems to be the loneliest person I've ever met, and it breaks my heart. All of these things feel private. Precious. And I don't want to share them with Rachel. Not yet, anyway.
— Lisa Ann Sandell, A Map of the Known World
Have you ever done something that you were really ashamed of? I mean somehing so bad you felt sick just thinking about it?''Everyone has. Why, what'd you do?''I didn't say goodbye to Mum.''That's not so bad.''Did you say goodbye to your mum before she left?' I'd never asked Martin about this before. I didn't want to hear the answer.'She left before I had a chance.''Oh.''That's what I like about you, Faltrain.You always know just what to say.
— Cath Crowley, The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain
Secrets are the kind of adventure she needs. Secrets are safe, and they do much to make you different. On the inside where it counts.
— E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
A secret spoken finds wings.
— Robert Jordan, The Path of Daggers
It is the one of the great secrets of life that those things are most worth doing,we do for others.
— Lewis Carroll
The secret must stay and- according to scientists- the love will live. The heart is quite comfortable with secrets. After all, its home is a dark wet place tucked in among all the other organs who aren't talking either.
— Toby Barlow, Sharp Teeth
…there was something about her that made you feel it was safe to tell her secrets.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars
The streetlight outside my house shines on tonight and I'm watching it like it could give me a vision. James ain't talked ever and he looks at that streetlight like it was a word and maybe like it was a verb. James wanted to streetlight me and make me bright and beautiful so all the moths and bats would circle me like I was the center of the world an held secrets.
— Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
To know a man’s secrets is to discover his weakness, and thus control his will
— Jeremy Aldana
The pyramid shape is said to hold many secrets and amazing properties. One of them is a sense of wonder.
— Vera Nazarian
Too long spent denying each other, we no longer hid our want.
— Scarlett Dawn, King Cave
He could hardly imagine anymore what his life would be without the weight of his hidden knowledge. He'd come to think of it as a kind of penance. It was self-destructive, he could see that, but that was the way things were. People smoked, they jumped out of airplanes, they drank too much and got into their cars and drove without seat belts.
— Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter
What kind of woman tells all her secrets?” my mother continued, flabbergasted and disappointed in me. “Especially anything that has to do with your body making babies! I know a woman who had no ovaries when she got married. Her husband found out only years later that they couldn’t have children. The two of them are happy together still; they live in a big house, and have a cute dog.
— Inna Swinton
This secret-keeping business was not for me.
— Liz Czukas, Ask Again Later
We've all done things we'd rather keep in the dark. It's only by shedding light on them that our demons can disappear.
— Michelle Moran, Rebel Queen
if you were quiet and blended into the background, you were less likely to make waves
— Jodi Picoult