c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
In the early 1970s, racial and gender discrimination was still prevalent. The easy camaraderie prevailing in the operating room evaporated at the completion of surgical procedures. There was an unspoken pecking order of seating arrangements at lunch among my fellow physicians. At the top were the white male 'primary producers' in prestigious surgical specialties. They were followed by the internists. Next came the general practitioners. Last on the list were the hospital-based physicians: the radiologists, pathologists and anaesthesiologists - especially non-white, female ones like me. Apart from colour, we were shunned because we did not bring in patients ourselves but, like vultures, lived off the patients generated by other doctors. We were also resented because being hospital-based and not having to rent office space or hire nursing staff, we had low overheads. Since a physician's number of admissions to the hospital and referral pattern determined the degree of attention and regard accorded by colleagues, it was safe for our peers to ignore us and target those in position to send over income-producing referrals. This attitude was mirrored from the board of directors all the way down to the orderlies.
— Adeline Yen Mah, Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter
He edged closer to his father’s bones and sinews. Penny slipped an arm around him and he lay close against the lank thigh. His father was the core of safety. His father swam the swift creek to fetch back his wounded dog. The clearing was safe, and his father fought for it, and for his own. A sense of snugness came over him and he dropped asleep.
— Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Sister?” Jessie Kay scowled. “Do I really look like his sister? I clearly come from grade-A stock while his ancestors made a few poor choices along the way.
— Gena Showalter
Ma Baxter rocked complacently. They were all pleased whenever she made a joke. Her good nature made the same difference in the house as the hearth-fire had made in the chill of the evening.
— Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling
It's like he's my family, except better, because I've chosen him.
— Patrick Ness
It had been a wake-up call and now all she wanted was to keep her dad in sight and make sure he didn't eat too many Mars Bars or drink too much beer.
— Vicky Pattison, All That Glitters
It wasn't normal, it was quite far from normal, but they were hers and she loved everything about them.
— Vicky Pattison, All That Glitters
The heart in every human is the sacred love.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Does anybody remember the day when family was family, a woman was a woman, and a man was a man?
— Delano Johnson, Rare Images of Love
Enough, I say. Our guests will be arriving shortly, and I would as lief they were left in the dark about this particular strain of insanity in the family that makes you two revert to childhood at the drop of a napkin.
— Kasey Michaels, The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane
Man is the head of the family, just as Christ is the Head of the Church.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
To lose someone you love is the very worst thing in the world. It creates an invisible hole that you feel you are falling down and will never end. People you love make the world real and solid and when they suddenly go away forever, nothing feels solid any more.
— Matt Haig, A Boy Called Christmas
If we wish to have a beautiful, peaceful and safe home, we need healthy expanding roots that go deep into the ground. These roots are our Routine, our Stability, our Structure.
— Nataša Nuit Pantović, Conscious Parenting: Mindful Living Course for Parents
But being a brother or a sister (if you are lucky enough) is the role of a lifetime.
— Holly Goldberg Sloan, Appleblossom the Possum
I can replace things, but I could never replace my wife and kids.
— Pablo Escobar
The way you remember or dream about your loved ones - the ones who are gone - you can't stop their endings from jumping ahead of the rest of their stories. You don't get to choose the chronology of what you dream, or the order of events in which you remember someone. In your mind - in your dreams, in your memories - sometimes the story begins with the epilogue.
— John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries
If we understand we need each other, we will keep together.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
The clock had been Sylvie's, and her mother's before that. It had gone to Ursula on Sylvie's death and Ursula had left it to Teddy, and so it had zigzagged its way down the family tree......The clock was a good one, made by Frodsham and worth quite a bit, but Teddy knew if he gave it to Viola she would sell it or misplace it or break it and it seemed important to him that it stayed in the family. An heirloom. ('Lovely word,' Bertie said.) He liked to think that the little golden key that wound it, a key that would almost certainly be lost by Viola, would continue to be turned by the hand of someone who was part of the family, part of his blood. The red thread.
— Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins
Family life was and always will be the foundation of any civilization. Destroy the family and you destroy the country.
— Erin Pizzey
For my mum, to whom I'd turn in a heartbeat.
— Non Pratt, Trouble
The greatest gift at Christmas is love. The love that bind us together us one Human Family.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Your friend mourns your losses with you, because they experience them too. The truth is, no matter how lonely you might feel, you're never going through anything alone....you can choose your family.
— Jennifer Lopez, True Love
Don’t only wait until Christmas to love, love at all times.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
It may be too late, if you wait until Christmas to show those who you love, you have loved them.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Love at all times.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
They had learned that Sorhatani expected the same sort of instant obedience as her husband. She had grown up around men of power and had married into the great khan’s family at a very young age. She knew that men prefer to follow, that it takes an effort of will to lead. She had that will.
— Conn Iggulden, Khan: Empire of Silver
Old Barley might be as old as thee hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing.
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
...But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begins.
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
Every family is a ghost story.
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.
— Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.
John was still making comments regarding violent things that he shouldn't, but I hoped he was just being a big mouth. Nobody was going to listen to me anyway.
— Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.
To be around family is to feel the possibility of growing roots again.
— Nadia Hashimi, When the Moon is Low
My God. Johannes, are you saying that you’re accepting this task because I asked you?’ Cabal did not reply. Instead he found a loose thread on the eiderdown and fiddled distractedly with it. Horst sat on the side of the bed, embraced his brother around the shoulders with one arm, and rubbed the top of his head with the knuckles of the other. ‘Horst!’ snapped Cabal. ‘I am no longer eight years old!’ Horst kissed him on the top of the head. ‘You’ll always be my little brother, Johannes, even if you look older than me now.
— Jonathan L. Howard, The Brothers Cabal
She felt as buoyantly patriotic as her Chechen classmates who could trace their family trees back to the acorns
— Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Her mother stared in quiet awe of this more artful rearrangement of her genetic code, and slipped into a contentedness that usually appeared only after the red wine had fallen below the bottle label.
— Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Parent greatest gift to their children is their bond of love.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
The one who doesn't, at the time of bliss as well as crisis, abandon his own, is the one worthy to be addressed as a human.
— Radhika Mundra
He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it
— Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.
It is true that you can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends. It is also true that you can choose your partner and in doing so, you end up choosing the family you've always wanted.
— J.R. Rim
He took a deep breath in, still managing himself as if he were resisting temptation. He was a soldier, his father was in the service, too. Crying wasn't something Morell men did. They just didn't. He hadn't cried at Robbie Morell's funeral.So he wasn't going to now.
— Luke  Taylor, Shatterpoint Alpha
Eating a huge home cooked Christmas dinner was his personal favorite. Evan would look around after each Christmas Day was done. There were empty dishes, and torn up wrapping paper on the ground. Monty was passed out on the couch stuffed with food. Evan would close his eyes and hear the day. He could feel the memories that were just made.
— David Rangel, Evan the Christmas Elf: Ghost Hunter
... that same hardware and tackle shop his dad got lost in for hours while Kache waited in the truck, writing lyrics on the backs of old envelopes his mom kept in the glove compartment for blotting her lipstick. Kache had written around the red blooms of her lip prints.
— Seré Prince Halverson, All the Winters After
But the fact is, as one grows close to death, the only thing that matters is family. I hope you can see that.
— David Baldacci, Day of Doom
Don’t give up on yourself, your family and your nation.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
May God bless you and your family.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
At her words, words of forgiveness from Rose, an honest and just woman, something broke inside of Wince. His tears began to flow. Age seemed to drift from his face like misty ghosts from a morning field. Katie lifted his chin and, holding back her own tears, looked into his eyes. "Thank you, Wince."Eve placed her free hand on his shoulder. "May we hold her now?"Wince nodded and gently released the baby into the waiting arms of her sisters."You did the right thing, Wince." Rose gave Wince a hug. "And you can help us bury her after Wilson and the Tar Ponds City Police see if they can find anybody to lay charges against after all this time.
— Beatrice Rose Roberts, Twin Loyalties: From the Chronicles of Tar Ponds City
A live-in domestic worker: "You are never sure that your soul is your own except when you are out of the house.
— H.W. Brands, American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900
If you haven't guessed yet, my family is made up of ultra-nerds. This is not necessarily a bad thing. We play games like Scrabble and watch documentaries together. I have always known that I am going to college. Yet, there are times when it can get a little embarrassing. As Mom admits, "Re-enacting is the final step before Star Trek conventions." In a couple of years, my family will probably be doing that, too.
— Maya Van Wagenen
When life gets tough, just love it a bit harder.
— Mounia Bagha, Celebration
At sacred-time, I will give birth to divine-twins in Jesus Name. Amen.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?
— Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.
A family is a group of people who keep confusing you with someone you were as a kid.
— Robert Brault
It is not a single crime when a child is photographed while sexually assaulted (raped.) It is a life time crime that should have life time punishments attached to it. If the surviving child is, more often than not, going to suffer for life for the crime(s) committed against them, shouldn't the pedophiles suffer just as long? If it often takes decades for survivors to come to terms with exactly how much damage was caused to them, why are there time limits for prosecution?
— Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.
Renunciation is not rejecting the family but accepting the whole world as family. Renunciation is not changing the name or dress. It is changing the attitude towards life. Renunciation is not removing the hairs form the head. It is eliminating the negative thoughts from the mind. Renunciation is not running away from responsibility, doership or fruits of action but it is focusing on the fruits and actions that will bring happiness to the whole world. Renunciation is the ultimate compassion and ultimate forgiveness.
— Amit Ray, Walking the Path of Compassion
Listen.I will lose myselfif it means I can find you.
— Alaska Gold, Growing Light
The family is one of the greatest traps that society has used for millennia to keep man a slave
— Osho
The story of my birth that my mother told me went like this: "When you were coming out I wasn't ready yet and neither was the nurse. The nurse tried to push you back in, but I shit on the table and when you came out, you landed in my shit."If there ever was a way to sum things up, the story of my birth was it.
— Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.
Well, I've always wanted to call my son 
— Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Vol. 2
I immersed myself in my relationship with my husband, in little ways at first. Dutch would come home from his morning workout and I’d bring him coffee as he stepped out of the shower. He’d slip into a crisp white shirt and dark slacks and run a little goop through his hair, and I’d eye him in the mirror with desire and a sultry smile that he couldn’t miss. He’d head to work and I’d put a love note in his bag—just a line about how proud I was of him. How beautiful he was. How happy I was as his wife.He’d come home and cook dinner and instead of camping out in front of the TV while he fussed in the kitchen, I’d keep him company at the kitchen table and we’d talk about our days, about our future, about whatever came to mind. After dinner, he’d clear the table and I’d do the dishes, making sure to compliment him on the meal. On those weekends when he’d head outside to mow the lawn, I’d bring him an ice-cold beer. And, in those times when Dutch was in the mood and maybe I wasn’t, well, I got in the mood and we had fun.As the weeks passed and I kept discovering little ways to open myself up to him, the most amazing thing happened. I found myself falling madly, deeply, passionately, head-over-heels in love with my husband. I’d loved him as much as I thought I could love anybody before I’d married him, but in treating him like my own personal Superman, I discovered how much of a superhero he actually was. How giving he was. How generous. How kind, caring, and considerate. How passionate. How loving. How genuinely good. And whatever wounds had never fully healed from my childhood finally, at long last, formed scar tissue. It was like being able to take a full breath of air for the first time in my life. It was transformative. And it likely would save our marriage, because, at some point, all that withholding would’ve turned a loving man bitter. On some level I think I’d known that and yet I’d needed my sister to point it out to me and help me change.Sometimes it’s good to have people in your life that know you better than you know yourself.
— Victoria Laurie, Sense of Deception
Yes, love your family, and also love your friends. For some friends are truly family. Love the people in your life. Love them without measure. And don’t worry about spoilage. Potatoes spoil, people don’t spoil.
— Steve Goodier
At the end of the day, your relationships with the people in your life will be greater assets than any material things. Take time. Be present. You'll thank yourself for it later.
— Vironika Tugaleva
Family is not limited by blood or marriage. It's limited to love and bond to one another in one's heart
— Joyce Guo
The love between friends could create life.
— Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica
The more you try to crush your nature, the more it will control you. Be what you are. No one who really loves you will stop.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels
Today is WOUND FREE WEDNESDAY! You start to feel it during the Holiday season; a tug in your heart, the friction within your soul, all the past complicated feelings that rise up. Choose to stay in the moment with the life you are living NOW instead of allowing the past to dictate you choices, feelings, and responses. Be love, be compassion, rise above the past and stay in the moment. BE the GRATITUDE that is within you.
— Midge Noble
I don’t recall ever seeing my mother as a human being. She would always be weeping and wailing in the corner of the kitchen like a dog tied up to be tormented. My father would assail her with a hail of insults, and when her endurance broke, she would whine aloud, ‘Why good Lord? Why? Take me and save me.’ Only then would my father stand up, take the cord out of his headdress, and whip her nonstop for half an hour, spitting at her throughout.
— Hassan Blasim
No matter what your family happens to be like, it affects you, affects who you are. It matters.
— Faith McKay, Prophecy Girl
So long divided and so differently situated, the ties of blood were little more than nothing.
— Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
Who wants avocado?
— Wendy Lustbader
A tiny home with love was better than a world without it.
— T.K. Kiser, The Firebrand Legacy
I can push them away, fight them, or ignore them but family is something you can never get rid of.
— Joyce Guo
The disaster, as Dad and others saw it, was the emerging AIDS crisis and the cultural attacks instigated by conservative against gay men and women in the early 1980s. It was found in the cruel indifference of President Ronald Reagan, who wouldn’t publicly address the epidemic until the end of his second term, after twenty thousand Americans had died, and the hostile rhetoric of conservatives close to Reagan like Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, and Pat Buchanan, Reagan’s future speechwriter. In 1983, Buchanan wrote of AIDS, “The poor homosexuals–they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution.
— Alysia Abbott, Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father
Of course, it’s now obvious why he was so angry that day. People don’t move into hospice to live but to die. And that half an egg sandwich I ended up making him–that sandwich was the last meal he ate in our Haight-Ashbury apartment, our one true home.
— Alysia Abbott, Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father
Until we meet someday.
— Hamidah Dolhadi
The biggest mistake that parents make, is believing that their assigned task in life is to teach their children and to guide them in every situation of their children's lives. The truth is that it is the task of parents to both learn from their children and to guide them as well. Parenting is a relationship that goes both ways, from the moment your child is born, you learn from that person, and in fact, your lessons begin long before your child's lessons do. Later on, when you've learned a great deal already, then they begin to learn from you. Throughout our lives, it is a give-and-take relationship, in many ways. Our assigned task is to learn from our children, and to guide and teach them. Their assigned task is to learn from us, and also to teach us.
— C. JoyBell C.
She had worn the Morgenstern ring since Jace had left it for her, and sometimes she wondered why. Did she really want to be reminded of Valentine? And yet, at the same time, was it ever right to forget?You couldn't erase everything that caused you pain with its recollection. She didn't want to forget Max or Madeleine, or Hodge, or the Inquisitor, or even Sebastian. Every moment was valuable; even the bad ones.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
Wonderful souls make life wonderful.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
First they burned her - that was last month. Actually just two weeks ago. Now they're starvng him. When he's dead, they'll burn him too.Oh, how jolly. All this burning of family members in the summertime.
— Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance
She stood in awe of her elder daughter. Lida was never tender, she spoke only about serious things; she lived her own separate life and for her mother and sister was as sacred and slightly mysterious a personage as an admiral who always remains in his cabin is for his sailors.- The House with the Mezzanine
— Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories
How strange the feelings when it was not your name anymore that appeared as that person's favorite.
— Hamidah Dolhadi
Rachel had been worried she couldn't remember what Sam looked like
—  now she worried he wouldn't recognize her.
A sweet kiss on her head made her little heart swell; she had pancakes, her dog. She had love. All was well.
— Renata Bowers, Frieda B. and the Zillabeast
I do mistakes. You do mistakes. Still we end up with a warm hug. That's you. That's me.
— Anuj Tiwari, It Had To Be You
Family is the only why of life
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
We fail to enjoy the sacred moment, when we overwork.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
The effect of overworking
—  we miss sacred moments.
Love is divine force of existence.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Promise mw, you will never leave me.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
I love you endlessly.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
The grace of service is heart of belonging.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
A rubber plant is just about the ideal family.
— Haruki Murakami
Once upon a time in the Land of Sad, / a girl went on a journey. / She was not a princess, except to her mother... / Her father had vanished some tipsy moons ago, / kidnapped by the pirate Captain Smirnoff.
— Susan Browne
Family is the greatest treasure.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Don’t overwork! Enjoy the sacred existence.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
If you chase anything in life chase the things that get you excited about living. Chase the things that give you hope, happiness and a glimpse of a better life. Chase the things that make you want to be a better person. Chase the things that inspire you to think, create and live joyfully. Chase the things that reinforce in your soul that you can make a difference. Chase the things that make you want to transform your heart from selfish to selfless. When you chase that kind of storm you are chasing rainbows.
— Shannon L. Alder
No matter what, they always had each other. How did people get through life without sisters?
— Michelle Madow, Diamonds are Forever
Sisterhood was about shared experiences, trust, knowing you had people who would be there for you and would listen to you no matter what, and who could always tell if there was something wrong. They were the ones who, with a single look, knew if you were about to burst into giggles or into tears and why, and who knew when you needed to get out of the house for a midnight trip to In-N-Out Burger to gorge on a milkshake and animal-style fries. They were the ones you could be raging angry with one moment, and completely forgive ten minutes later. She would always be there for her sisters, and they would always be there for her, because they loved each other no matter what.
— Michelle Madow, Diamonds are Forever
No connection can ever be broken if love holds tight at both ends.
— Shannon L. Alder
If you have to explain your sense of humor, then you are performing for the wrong crowd.
— Shannon L. Alder
Families are like little villages. You know where everything is, you know how everything works, your identity is fixed, and you can't really leave, or connect with anything or anybody outside, until your physically no longer there.
— Kim Gordon, Girl in a Band
Who'll hold families together, if everybody has to live? Living is a compromise, between doing what you want and doing what other people want.
— John Updike, Rabbit Redux
You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you be the constitutions of your family marry to be still richer? People who know in what their main excellence consists are not to be blamed (are they?) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable? Is true happiness any part of your family-view?—So far from it, that none of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich. So let them fret on, grumble and grudge, and accumulate; and wondering what ails them that they have not happiness when they have riches, think the cause is want of more; and so go on heaping up till Death, as greedy an accumulator as themselves, gathers them into his garner!
— Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady
You are nothing like my father. And like my father you are nothing.
— Eduardo C. Corral
The two qualities essential to a good man were honesty and compassion, Malin felt. His father lived his life as if he had rejected these qualities. Saviman Kabalana reasoned that loving kindness and compassion were weaknesses. Therefore he hid behind a mask that concealed his innate human qualities of love and kindness, both in his office and at home.
— මාර්ටින් වික්‍රමසිංහ, Yuganthaya
The kind of individual that you see on the outside, is never the same person on the inside.
— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Neglected But Undefeated: The Life Of A Boy Who Never Knew A Mother's Love
I should have told you long ago how much I love you, but those fleeting moments of opportunity passed all too quickly. Before I knew it, you had gone to your eternity. Nevertheless, I want to tell you now that I love you . . . still!
— Terry L. Mills, The Escort: Walking to Eternity with My Brother
With the long list of supposedly health-endangering meals on our menus, ‘starving’ seems likea healthy option to have on our list of safe-to-eat meals.
— Uche Mac-Auley
No one said parenting was easy,but NO good parent has any right to give up.It is one labyrinth you can never quit because it seems too hard.
— Gillian Duce
Appreciate all the wonderful things in life
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Cockroaches, Ari. Humans are like cockroaches.” Crag nodded his head, his eyes twinkling.
— Beverly Ovalle, Stealing Hope A Dragon's Fated Heart
I would hear him screaming, I would watch him bleed, I would tear his flesh piece by piece before I would worry about Æthelflaed. This was family. This was revenge.
— Bernard Cornwell, Warriors of the Storm
You’re busy. You don’t have the skill set. Their problems are too much. Their life is a mess.Your life is a mess. You’re too impatient. You’re not kind enough. You don’t even like them.You have nothing to offer. What does it really matter?Turns out, in the end, it’s all that really matters.
— Edie Wadsworth
Whenever my mom talks too much, I say she has Pac-man of the mouth.
— Dillinger Cobb
Whenever anyone has asked me if wrestling is “worth it,” meaning is the reward worth the pain, worth the travel, worth the being away from your family, I’ve always answered yes. And it always felt like it was. But I naïvely assumed that when I was done wrestling, I could always go home and make up for all the time I’ve missed with my family and friends. Now, going home isn’t the same, and there is nothing I can do to make up for all the time I’ve spent away from my father. Instead of being proud of my accomplishments, all I feel is regret about not being there for the most important people in my life, the people who have loved me in a way that had nothing to do with wrestling. If you were to ask me today if all the reward was worth the sacrifices, I would say no. Yet I keep on because I’m not quite sure what else to do with myself and because stopping now won’t give me any more time with my father.
— Daniel Bryan
Do what is right and what is good." -- Bryeison to Alasdair before going to his death on the battlefield.
— Michelle Franklin
Having Aelin help him the first time had been awkward enough that he couldn’t even go until she started singing a bawdy tune at the top of her lungs and turned on the sink faucet, all the while helping him stand over the toilet.
— Sarah J. Maas, Queen of Shadows
Darkness might keep flooding in, but I finally had just enough light to find the way back to myself.
— Emery Lord, The Start of Me and You
I know what you mean", she said. "Families can seem so normal and boring from the inside that you don't know you're different until someone else makes you feel different.
— Kate Scelsa, Fans of the Impossible Life
Mom has a massive sunflower for a soul so big there's hardly any room in her for organs. Jude and me have one soul between us that we have to share: a tree with its leaves on fire. And Dad has a plate of maggots for his.
— Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun
Now”—she leaned in a bit—“would you like to go flying with Grandmum before we take you home, so you can watch her toss cows around for no other reason than her own amusement?”“Sounds unnecessarily cruel.”“Exactly!” Rhiannon used her tail to place her granddaughter on her back. “See? Already you’re learning what it means to be part of this family.
— G.A. Aiken, How to Drive a Dragon Crazy
Why can't life always be lived under the stars,' she said, 'with great music and family and friends?
— Jan Karon
Wherever we travel to, the wonderful people we meet become our family.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Some women born to raise a beautiful families while some women are born to build an empire from ashes and rule the rest.
— Pradeepa Pandiyan
Éibhear isn’t my friend. He’s kin. A blood relation.”“Which means what exactly?”“To a Cadwaladr, it means that if I have good cause, I could beat the scales off his back and get away with it.
— G.A. Aiken, How to Drive a Dragon Crazy
The best story to tell your kids is that of your own family.
— Lauren Machta
May my family, household and I be a devout God-fearing men and women.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
There are three things I love, three things I spend time with, three things I treat alike: family; friends; and books.
— Ogwo David Emenike
DiggingBetween my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look downTill his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging.The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly.He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deepTo scatter new potatoes that we picked,Loving their cool hardness in our hands.By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.My grandfather cut more turf in a dayThan any other man on Toner’s bog.Once I carried him milk in a bottleCorked sloppily with paper. He straightened upTo drink it, then fell to right awayNicking and slicing neatly, heaving sodsOver his shoulder, going down and downFor the good turf. Digging.The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slapOf soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken in my head.But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests.I’ll dig with it.
— Seamus Heaney
Hold my hands and let walk together.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
The sacred gift of parenthood is inscribe in the universal words ‘Papa’ and ‘Mama’.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Mandy was thinking back to when she was five years old, when she, her parents and Jud went outside before Christmas and had a snowball fight with the gray snow of Sydney Mines. “This is a wicked blast,” Jud would say, and Mandy would snap photos with a 35mm disposable film camera, photos she wished very much she could step into sometimes.
— Rebecca McNutt, Super 8: The Sequel to Smog City
Still... I would have hugged my mother if we were the kind of family who hugged. If touching her weren't impossible. If her subnightie waft was not so utterly, fatally repulsive. That's how much I loved her.
— Jerry Stahl, Perv - A Love Story
He had his treasure, but finally all he wanted was his family. And peace.
— Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead
When I began writing, I did not realize that the Holocaust would become a critical part of the story. During and after WWII, neither the survivors of the Holocaust nor the combat solders were diagnosed or treated for what is now known as PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder). Many of the characters in this book were victims of this now well-known disorder.
— Helene Uhlfelder, Secrets & Deceptions: A Three-Generation Mystery
In fact, growing up, I thought there were two types of families:1) Those who need a dictionary to get through dinner.2) Those who don't.We were no. 1. Most every night, we'd end up consulting the dictionary, which we kept on a shelf just six steps from the table. "If you have a question," my folks would say, "then find the answer.
— Randy Pausch
The best use of family was having it in front of other people.
— Julia Pierpont, Among the Ten Thousand Things
Pray daily for your family.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
Discipline is needed in our family lives.
— Sunday Adelaja
Are you ashamed of what I've done?" she dared to ask. His brow creased. "Why would you ever think that?"She couldn't quite look him in the eye as she ran a finger down the blanket. "Are you?"Aedion was silent long enough that she lifted her head - but found him gazing toward the door, as though he could see through it, across the city, to the captain. When he turned to her, his handsome face was open - soft in a way she doubted many ever saw. "Never," he said. "I could never be ashamed of you.
— Sarah J. Maas, Queen of Shadows
They’d been forged of the same ore, two sides of the same golden, scarred coin. She’d know it when she spied him atop the execution plataform. She couldn’t explain it. No one could understand that instant bond, that soul-deep assurance and rightness, unless they, too, had experienced it. But she owned no explanations to anyone - not about Aedion.
— Sarah J. Maas, Queen of Shadows
Us. All regrets, left them in the sea, smiling at life as if it was a beautiful dream, because if one thing is certain, clearing the strange foreigh steam. Like the diamond ring that fits in your finger, we are stronger as a steel linker
— Lucia Ohanian
Good friends will allow you to be as innocent and free as a child when in private, and as wise and mature as an adult when in public.
— Criss Jami, Healology
At the bottom of the mountain you have your scoffers and doubters, by midpoint you have your envious and haters, and when you reach to the top you have new friends and family you never met or thought existed.
— Anthony Liccione
Funny how you can forget that every family isn't like yours.
— Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here
Some people think family's about DNA, but it ain't. It's about the folks who want you, who stick with you no matter what. They know your secrets and flaws, and you know theirs, and you love each other anyway.
— Kim Fielding, Rattlesnake
Being alone is easier than having a family. When you have a family, you are responsible to each other. It’s easier to navigate the world without that burden.
— Zachary Jernigan, Shower of Stones
My family has always believed that when we are faced with large and apparently impossible problems, the best solutions are found by the insane people, not the sensible ones.
— Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon
The author observes the shift now that children are not a source of labor for the family, that they have gone from employees of the parents to the bosses of the parents.
— Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
My mother was good at that, making people feel normal. Safe. Like as long as she was there, nothing truly bad could happen.
— Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty
We always make the best decision we can based upon what we believe in that moment. When I was growing up, my father and I experienced a lot of tension with each other for many years. He had bipolar disorder and it was very difficult for him. As I got older and went through my transformation of consciousness and really forgave him—and forgave myself and forgave the world—my father started showing up in my awareness as an angel. He got happier and happier and our relationship began to improve. People would say, “Your dadhas really changed a lot,” and I would say, “My mind has really changed.” My father was just reflecting that back. In fact, he came to me one day and said, “David, I’m sorry. I was not a very good father. I didn’t do the things that a good father should do.”I replied, “Nonsense! I don’t believe that for one instant. You did the best you could and I did the best I could. You didn’t let me down and I didn’t let you down. We’re not going to buy into that guilt trip anymore.”He lit up when I said this. His whole demeanor changed and he instantly reflected love back to me. That simple exchange completely rearranged our view of everything that had taken place during those early years. None of it mattered anymore. We had been mistaken about many things because we couldn’t perceive truly while we were going through our time together.
— David Hoffmeister, Quantum Forgiveness: Physics, Meet Jesus
It is strangely wonderful to feel the lack of something instead of believing that it was never there in the first place.
— Kevin    Wilson
But having people meet my family was a secret fear. It would be like taking someone to a dark room to show them my anal fissures, and you can't just go introducing everybody to your anal fissures. Only special people get to see such as that.
— Harrison Scott Key, The World's Largest Man: A Memoir
Family is where the Heart is!
— Anuranjita Kumar, Can I have it all?
Maybe that was the answer to good parenting—pretending the first child was the second.
— Emma Straub, The Vacationers
But books were full of stories and stories were full of lies and lies hurt Jesus's feelings, so I didn't know what to think. I blamed my family. They were the ones who taught me so much about telling stories, and how not to do it, and then, in inspired moments of surprise, how to tell one so good you forgot what day it was, and I liked forgetting what day it was, so I made certain life choices that would allow me to get paid to forget what day it was and teach others to forget what day it was, which is, after all, what I think heaven probably is: the whole world, forgetting what day it is. You have to, I bet, with an endless supply of them.
— Harrison Scott Key, The World's Largest Man: A Memoir
It is easier to start a war than to end it.
— Gabriel García Márquez
There was no reply. So Z glanced over again - just as a tear slide down Phury's cheek."Ah...fuck," Z muttered."Yeah. Pretty much." Another tear rolled out of Phury's eye. "God...damn. I'm leaking.""Okay, brace yourself."Phury scrubbed his face with his palms. "Why?""Because... I think I'm going to try to hug you.
— J.R. Ward, Lover Awakened
I get to see her at night.""No deal.""That's the only deal. I sleep over.""She's my daughter.""She's the love of my life". My heart was pumping so damn fast I needed to see her. David was searching my eyes.I let him see the truth. I needed her. That was the only way."Fine, but only you. Logan can't start sleeping over, too.""He'll try."David groaned. "You two, you just storm your way in-""We're family to her. We took her in when you let her go. We protected her from that woman.
— Tijan, Fallen Crest Public
But family connections are weird. Even if your relatives aren't good to you, they're still your blood. You can't lose that connection completely. And believe me, I've got a few relatives on my dad's side I'd love to lose.
— Rick Riordan
Hannah, as if she understood her place in the cosmos, grew from quiet infant to watchful child: a child fond of nooks and corners, who curled up in closets, behind sofas, under dangling tablecloths, staying out of sight as well as out of mind, to ensure the terrain of the family did not change.
— Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You
But Mrs. Meany, see, the women went on, leaning forward, despite how her heart was broken, pulled herself together, anyway, to put on a good face for the rest of the family at home. And she went back, Sunday after Sunday, right up until the Sunday before she died. Mrs. Meany put her beautiful love - a mother's love - against the terrible scenes that brewed like sewage in that poor girl's troubled mind. She persevered, she baked her cakes, she hauled herself (the goiter swinging) on and off the ferry, and she sat, brokenhearted, holding her daughter's hand, even as Lucy shouted her terrible words, proving to anyone with eyes to see that a mother's love was a beautiful, light, relentless thing that the devil could not diminish.
— Alice McDermott, Someone
In every voyage, be fully present.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of  Wisdom: Great  mind
I'm well aware that there is no job more important than that of raising a child, but the problem is that it isn't valued.
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train
Funny how things work themselves out. Things happen that split up family and friends, then things happen that bring them back together. Everyone is in your life for a reason. My hope is for all the reasons to be good. Those who love you never lose touch, are always consistent, and unquestionable.
— April Mae Monterrosa
You should always be thankful and express gratitude for your love, beauty, family, and everything in your life.
— Debasish Mridha
There are some corrupt Christians who do their business with female donkeys.
— Gabriel García Márquez
Family is never really gone.
— Beth Revis, The Body Electric
Having been fucked up by my family and community, I’ll never know where my gayness came from, and where it ends and “neurosis” begins. But as a gay person I know I’m a vital element in our civilization.
— Edward Field, Our Deep Gossip: Conversations with Gay Writers on Poetry and Desire
A carpenter is hired- a roof repaired, a porch built. Everything that can be fixed. June, July, August. Everyday we hear their laughter. I think of the painting by van Gogh, the man in the chair. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go. His hands over his eyes.
— Mary Oliver
Family was very important to us. It was one of the only things we had, and what kept up grounded. Some of the best times we had were the times when we were all together. It didn't matter what we were doing. During the holidays or just on a weekend afternoon, the whole point was just being together. There doesn't seem to be as much of that going on today. People are so busy. But family is everything.
— Clara Cannucciari, Clara's Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories, and Recipes from the Great Depression
There had been three of them once: James, then a sister named Fonsiba, then Lucas, children of Aunt Tomey's Turl, old Carother McCaslin's son, and Tennie Beauchamp, whom Edmonds' great-uncle Amodeus McCaslin won from a neighbor in a poker game in 1859. . .But James, the eldest, ran away before he became of age and didn't stop until he had crossed the Ohio River and they never heard from or of him again at all––that is, that his white kindred ever knew. It was as though he had not only. . .put running water between himself and the land of his grandmother's betrayal and his father's nameless birth, but he had interposed latitude and geography too, shaking from his feet forever the very dust of the land where his white ancestor could acknowledge or repudiate him from one day to another, according to his whim, but where he dared not even repudiate the white ancestor save when it met the white man's humor of the moment.
— William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses
We are one human family.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of our age is the subsiding of all other concerns to the predominance of politics. And thus, we have succumbed to a Lyndon Johnson-like dependence upon the power of the state.The tragic result has been that all of life has been politicized, and if the new social engineers have their way, politics will increase in power - especially in its power to penetrate into our everyday lives and rule our destinies. For in fact politics has become, for many of the political elite, a kind of state religion.
— George Grant, The Family Under Siege: What The New Social Engineers Have In Mind For You And Your Children
For all the things we do in our lives and the people that surround us, its family and those few loyal friends that God has blessed us with.
— Ron Baratono
There is only one thing worse than a little baby who won't stop crying: it is a big baby who won't stop whining about it
— Agona Apell, The Success Genome Unravelled: Turning Men from Rot to Rock
I am thinking of our family's womenas faraway bulbs, their historywith crippling loss, and how I am pieced together, shell and sand,from the spine of their collective strength.
— Jerrold Yam, Scattered Vertebrae
If in poetry court she was calledto testify on matters whereI was condemned to imprisonment: parking my egoat a broken meter, line violations, forced rhyme,dealing stanzaics to children, shootingoff my mouth, getting cute, for even thislatest attempt at verse, she would tell the whole truth,she would admit from the pitof her unsung brilliance,from all of the paintings and poemsshe herself has been makingand storing in the vast empire of her singing soul, your Honor, my daughter is guiltyof plagiarizing my cells.
— Kristen Henderson, Drum Machine
I, too, was fiercely independent and thought I could make two equal four.
— Dominic Riccitello
Life’s short when compared to eternity, but eternity is only worth it because of life.
— Scott  Thompson
I had never before considered leaving my religion, my family, my customs, and my beliefs behind. It was all that I had ever known. Would it be worth it to give it all up? I had no way of knowing. It was frightening even to contemplate a life beyond
— Carolyn Jessop
You are blood. You are sisters. No man can break that bond.
— Kim Boykin, A Peach of a Pair
Since our yesterdays are gone and our tomorrows are never promised, TODAY I want to thank all my amazing friends and family for being in my life.
— Steven Aitchison
But none of that really mattered. I had found my tribe. It felt like a family reunion for the family I'd never really known, a homecoming at the place where I was always meant to be but hadn't known how to find.
— David Levithan, Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story
Speak graciously to young men as you would to your brothers.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Speak gently to young women as you would to your sisters
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
My grandfather will adore you.""Because...?""You're not normal.""I see we're back to trading insults.""I meant that as a compliment.
— Jen Turano, A Most Peculiar Circumstance
Do not go gentle into that good night.
— Dylan Thomas
He took my family,” Adamat said. “Blackmailed me, and he still has my wife and oldest son. I want to get them back, and then kill him slowly.”“A lot of violence planned, for a family man,” the eunuch said.Adamat leaned forward. “‘Family,’” he said. “Remember that word. There is nothing that will make a man more desperate and more capable of violence than endangering his family.
— Brian  McClellan, The Crimson Campaign
Reflections they give meThat my mirror does notThey know the new meNot the old meThat I am not
— Kathleen  Marie, Me and My Three: Poems of Survival for My Children and Me: The Perfect Little Family
Gifts are not things that you earn or deserve they are a way for the giver to show their appreciation for you and Daren, you are a part of my family
— Chelsea Fine, Perfect Kind of Trouble
If you do not forgive, you are demanding something your offender does not choose to give, even if it is only confession of what he did. This "ties" him to you and ruins boundaries. Let the dysfunctional family you came from go. Cut it loose, and you will be free.
— Henry Cloud, Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life
On the road to success there are determination, real hard work, perseverance and challenges to tackle.
— Ahmet Adam Asar