Family Relationships Quotes

Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. Now that you're an adult, take refuge in the fact that some things are beyond your control. You owe it to yourself to steer clear of people who are harmful to your health.

~ Andrea Lavinthal

So that’s your sister?” asks Dee in a quiet voice.“Yeah.”“The one you risked your life for?”“Yeah.”The twins nod politely in that automatic way that people do when they don’t want to say something insulting.“Your family any better?” I ask.Dee and Dum look at each other, assessing.“Nah,” says Dee.“Not really,” says Dum at the same time.

~ Susan Ee

If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

~ William Makepeace Thackeray

We didn’t want to admit it then, but we were friends. Best friends.

~ Shannon Celebi

I've remembered that most of life is about small, essential connections, so unobtrusive, so elastic, that you scarcely realize they're actually holding you together. The big ones-the great, grand emotional bonds-those are the ones that break, the ones that fail you, the ones that give way and send you careening toward the foot of the bleak and jagged canyon. It's the tough, gnarled, unadorned ties that really do bind, that never let you fall all the way down into darkness.

~ Sharon Shinn

Scorned and torn, former love mates aim and shoot childish devastating daggers that penetrate beyond target to pierce the heart of their offspring.

~ T.f. Hodge

Mother was anchor. Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land.

~ Ruta Sepetys

Maybe we would grow apart, he would develop a personality that I would know nothing about, we would start our families, have children of our own, and there would come a point when in thinking about 'family' we would think of the ones we made, not the ones we were from.

~ Jenny Zhang

There are family mysteries I cannot solve. There are family mysteries I am unwilling to solve.

~ Sherman Alexie

Never sacrifice your children for the bigger house, fancier car or the 'better life'. The price you pay is hefty and non-refundable in the end.

~ Sotero M Lopez Ii

There is no better way to crush someone’s self-confidence than to tell this person that her / his choice was wrong, and that she / he should have listened to us (parents). Because, obviously, we know how to make the right choices and she / he does not.

~ Lukasz Laniecki

You don’t choose these people and in the not choosing you learn tolerance. You learn to forgive.

~ Heather Babcock

What makes a family is neither the absence of tragedy nor the ability to hide from misfortune, but the courage to overcome it and, from that broken past, write a new beginning.

~ Steve Pemberton

Whatever form they take, families are our most time-honoured settings for giving and receiving love, understanding and nurturing. They can connect us with our past and be the ground for the future through our children. They are places where we stand the best chance of being understood for who we truly are, not what we possess or the power we wield. They can give us meaning in life and hope when the outside world fails us and when we fail.

~ Dr Brian Babington

Large families are communities unto their own.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A theatrical spectacle is inherent whenever family members congregate and reacquaint themselves with powerful universal themes educed from homecomings including hugs, food, drink, conversation, politics, games, music, conflict, terror, mercy, smiles, tears, prayers, misfortune, and self-discovery.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Your mother wasn’t upset. “Scars stay with you so you don’t forget,” she said. She seemed almost satisfied.

~ Jinat Rehana Begum

Never lose sight of the people who are the foundation of the future you are working to build.

~ Carlos Wallace

In view of the frequent occurrence of modern domestic groups that do not consist of, or contain, an exclusive pair-bonded father and mother, I cannot see why anyone should insist that our ancestors were reared in monogamous nuclear families and that pair-bonding is more natural than other arrangements.

~ Marvin Harris

They say family's first, but family is the first to get you hurt

~ Chrisper Malamsha

Family is always a mirror. You can hide from other people, you can even hide from yourself, but your family is going to reflect what you’re doing right back at you.

~ Martina Boone

It took me a long time to realiseThat mothers are women who carry you And not necessarily in their womb.

~ Stacy Morris

Bad habits were all a matter of perspective, and as long as the present was viewed through the lens of the past, anyone would say he was doing a spectacular job.

~ Ann Patchett

Van Uoc felt the stab of a sad truth: she and her mother would never be as close as her mother and grandmother had been.Her mother got up, stretched her tidy, graceful frame and headed for the kitchen. Van Uoc wanted to be able to offer her some comfort, but what could she say? Her mother was right. The two of them represented an irreconcilable cultural split. Distance between them was inevitable.

~ Fiona Wood

We arrived from New York after a daylong slog through airports and planes and traffic. It was 10: 00 p.m. local time, but my body had no idea if it was night or day. Krishna was hungry, so I found some leftover dosa batter in the kitchen and started making one for her. Next thing I knew, my grandmother was by my side, commandeering the griddle. “Let me do it,” she said. “You don’t know where anything is.” I insisted, but she won, even though by then she cooked with only one arm, the other still paralyzed from the stroke. Then my aunt Papu came in and yelped, “You’re making your grandma cook?” She was appalled. “It’s ten at night!” Papu took over, my grandmother wouldn’t leave, and my uncle Ravi entered the fray. “Look at you,” he said. “You’re supposed to be this famous food person and you’re making these women cook at ten o’clock!” I quickly remembered how it felt to live with so many people. Every move you make is scrutinized. You get up and it’s “Where are you going?” You come back and it’s “Why are you wearing that blouse? I like the other one better.” You walk outside and someone calls from the veranda, “Don’t go that way, there’s too much sun!” It was exasperating and suffocating and God, I had missed it.

~ Padma Lakshmi

My father managed to change his entire life after I wrote a novel about his brutal regime as a family man. It took resoluteness and courage for my father to change, and I need to acknowledge that.

~ Pat Conroy

BEWARE DON'T RUN AFTER A MIRAGEWe were happier when we were poor. We were happier when we did not have good food to eat or good clothes to wear. We were happier when we did not have a luxurious life. We were happier when we did not have our own house because we had a home, a family and understood, loved and lived for each other. I have failed to understand what we run after even when we have all.

~ Amit Abraham

...we're not eighteen anymore. We've lived. We've created things that last – things of joy, and things of burden.

~ Dianna Hardy

It is sometimes hard to be a family.

~ Maurice Sendak

There is no right way to be a family.

~ Betsy L. Stone

We the caregivers, have the power to do things proactively to benefit our present and future generations.

~ Betsy L. Stone

Bond is stronger than blood. The family grows stronger by bond.

~ Itohan Eghide

The Lord gives a good many things twice over, but he don't give ye a mother but once.

~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I didn't give you this life, honey. They took to you because of who you are. You gave yourself this life.

~ David Isay

Myriam and I are both hard workers, and together we make a strong team. We found ways to make a living, educate our children, and to take care of my parents until their last days, and we managed to have fun doing it. ...The friendships we made along the way were the biggest treasure of all.

~ Marc Ashton

Children are God's way to rekindle the dwindling magic in relationships.

~ Nilesh Rathod

How rarely these few years, as work keeps up aloof,Or fares, or one thing or another,How we had days to spend under our parents' roof;Myself, my sister, and my brother.All five of us will die; to reckon from the pastThis flesh and blood is unforgiving.What's hard is that just one of us will be the lastTo bear it all and go on living.

~ Vikram Seth

In Sri Lanka, when two strangers meet, they ask a series of questions that reveal family, ancestral village, and blood ties until they arrive at a common friend or relative. Then they say, Those are our people, so you are our people. It's a small place. Everyone knows everyone.But in America, there are no such namings; it is possible to slip and slide here. It is possible to get lost in the nameless multitudes. There are no ropes binding one, holding one to the earth. Unbound by place or name, one is aware that it is possible to drift out into the atmosphere and beyond that, into the solitary darkness where there is no oxygen.

~ Nayomi Munaweera

Oh, how terribly backwards, and yet sadly common, it is to sit scowling at family all the day long and then quickly put on a smile for strangers who drop by.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

That's how birthdays were in our house. All hateful charades of pretty clothes, expensive presents, and ugly words . . .

~ Debbie Howells