Family Quotes

You are born into your family and your family is born into you. No returns. No exchanges.

~ Elizabeth Berg

All families are psychotic. Everybody has basically the same family - it's just reconfigured slightly different from one to the next.

~ Douglas Coupland

Hagrid, look what I’ve got for relatives!” Harry said furiously. “Look at the Dursleys!”“An excellent point,” said Professor Dumbledore. “My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers, but did Aberforth hide? No, he did not! He held his head high and went about his business as usual! Of course, I’m not entirely sure he can read, so that may not have been bravery. . . .

~ J.k. Rowling

Maybe it's just a daughter's job to piss off her mother.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

He made it very clear that he didn’t want me here,” she said at last. “That my remaining at the Institute is not the happy chance I thought it was. Not in his view.” “And after I just finished telling you why you should consider him family,” Jem said, a bit ruefully. “No wonder you looked as if I’d just told you something awful just happened.” “I’m sorry,” Tessa whispered. “Don’t be. It’s Will who ought to be sorry.” Jem’s eyes darkened. “We shall throw him out onto the streets,” he proclaimed. “I promise you he’ll be gone by morning.” Tessa started and sat upright. “Oh – no, you can’t mean that─” He grinned. “Of course I don’t. But you did feel better for a moment there, didn’t you?

~ Cassandra Clare

A woman or man of value doesn’t love you because of what he or she wants you to be or do for them. He or she loves you because your combined souls understand one another, complements each other, and make sense above any other person in this world. You each share a part of their soul's mirror and see each other’s light reflected in it clearly. You can easily speak from the heart and feel safe doing so. Both of you have been traveling a parallel road your entire life. Without each other's presence, you feel like an old friend or family member was lost. It bothers you, not because you have given it too much meaning, but because God did. This is the type of person you don't have to fight for because you can't get rid of them and your heart doesn't want them to leave anyways.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Getting some redecorating ideas?’ Nico asked. ‘Maybe you could do your dining room in mediaeval monk skulls.’ Hades arched an eyebrow. ‘I can never tell when you’re joking.

~ Rick Riordan

Will is… difficult,” Jem said. “But family is difficult. If I didn’t think the Institute was the best place for you, Tessa, I wouldn’t say it was. And one can build one’s own family. I know you feel inhuman, and as if you were set apart, away from life and love, but…” His voice cracked a little, the first time Tessa had heard him sound unsure. He cleared his throat. “I promise you, the right man won’t care.

~ Cassandra Clare

In an old house in Paris that was covered with vinesLived twelve little girls in two straight linesIn two straight lines they broke their breadAnd brushed their teeth and went to bed.They left the house at half past nineIn two straight lines in rain or shine-The smallest one was Madeline.

~ Ludwig Bemelmans

No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.

~ Erma Bombeck

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but a the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.

~ William Paul Young

Hades allowed himself the faintest smile, but there was nothing cruel in his eyes. ‘I can entertain the possibility that you acted for multiple reasons. My point is this: you and I rose to the aid of Olympus because you convinced me to let go of my anger. I would encourage you to do likewise. My children are so rarely happy. I … I would like to see you be an exception.’ Nico stared at his father. He didn’t know what to do with that statement. He could accept many unreal things – hordes of ghosts, magical labyrinths, travel through shadows, chapels made of bones. But tender words from the Lord of the Underworld? No. That made no sense.

~ Rick Riordan

I'm allergic to family occasions. Sometimes I think we'd do better as dandelion seeds-no family, no history, just floating off into the world, each on our own piece of fluff.

~ Sophie Kinsella

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

The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.

~ Michael Pollan

Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception.

~ Jodi Picoult

In a culture which holds the two-parent patriarchal family in higher esteem than any other arrangement, all children feel emotionally insecure when their family does not measure up to the standard. A utopian vision of the patriarchal family remains intact despite all the evidence which proves that the well-being of children is no more secure in the dysfunctional male-headed household than in the dysfunctional female-headed household. Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight, headed by females or males, are more likely to raise healthy, happy children with sound self-esteem. In future feminist movement we need to work harder to show parents the ways ending sexism positively changes family life. Feminist movement is pro-family. Ending patriarchal domination of children, by men or women, is the only way to make the family a place where children can be safe, where they can be free, where they can know love

~ Bell Hooks

I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

~ Oscar Wilde

I was just going to say it reminds me of the symbols on a family crest.”Noah stopped mid-stride, and turned very slowly. “We’re not related.”“I know, but—”“Don’t even think it.

~ Michelle Hodkin

Between 10 and 20 percent of people with anorexia die from heart attacks, other complications and suicide; the disease has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Or Kitty could have lost her life in a different way, lost it to the roller coaster of relapse and recovery, inpatient and outpatient, that eats up, on average, five to seven years. Or a lifetime: only half of all anorexics recovery in the end. The other half endure lives of dysfunction and despair. Friends and families give up on them. Doctors dread treating them. They’re left to stand in the bakery with the voice ringing in their ears, alone in every way that matters.

~ Harriet Brown

I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.

~ Toni Morrison

That's the best thing about little sisters: They spend so much time wishing they were elder sisters that in the end they're far wiser than the elder ones could ever be.

~ Gemma Burgess

If she wasn't your grandmother I'd shoot her.Ranger

~ Janet Evanovich

In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit.

~ Marge Kennedy

If you live in each other's pockets long enough, you're related.

~ Jodi Picoult

He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about.

~ Jamie Ford

To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost.

~ Leslye Walton

Talaith leaned forward, studied her youngest daughter. “You think you’re evil?”“Pure evil,” Izzy clarified, which got her a rather vicious glare from Rhi. An expression Dagmar had never thought the young,perpetually smiling or sobbing girl was capable of.“Why would you think you’re evil?”“It’s a feeling I have.”“No. Someone told her.”Rhi glowered at her sister. “I never said that.”“You didn’t have to,” Izzy shot back. “I know you.”“Well, who told her that?” Talaith demanded.And, as one, they all turned and looked at Gwenvael.He blinked, sat up straight. “I would never say such a thing to my dear sweet niece!”“You said it to me,” Talwyn snapped.“That’s because you’re not my dear sweet niece. You’re the rude little cow who threw a knife at my head.”“I wasn’t aiming for you. I was aiming for Mum.”“She’s right,” Annwyl admitted. “I just ducked behind you.” She shrugged. “Sorry.

~ G.a. Aiken

He sweeps her hair back from her ears; he swings her above his head. He says she is his émerveillement. He says he will never leave her, not in a million years.

~ Anthony Doerr

I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about.

~ Toni Morrison

Hermes gazed up at the stars. My dear young cousin, if there's one thing I've learned over the eons, it's that you can't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it. It doesn't matter if they hate you, or embarrass you, or simply don't appreciate your genius for inventing the Internet-You invented the Inte

~ Rick Riordan

We are not defined by the family into which we are born, but the one we choose and create. We are not born, we become.

~ Tori Spelling

You have one family, Charley. For good or bad. You have one family. You can’t trade them in. You can’t lie to them. You can’t run two at once, substituting back and forth.“Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.

~ Mitch Albom

I do have a point to all this,” she continues. “There are like twenty people in that waiting room right now. Some of them are related to you. Some of them are not. But we’re all your family.” She stops now. Leans over me so that the wisps of her hair tickle my face. She kisses me on the forehead. “You still have a family,” she whispers.

~ Gayle Forman

We share out craziness, our neuroses, our little bit of screwed-up-ness that comes from our family. We share it. And it feels like love.

~ Patrick Ness

These people make my family look easy to get along with.

~ Megan Whalen Turner

There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. Sometimes the difference between them is hard to see, but in the end time will show you that the cards you have been dealt could always have been worse.

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón

I kept thinking back to all those nights in Connecticut, when I was out the door as soon as dinner was over, yelling my plans behind me as I headed to my car, ready for my real night to begin—my time with my family just something to get through as quickly as possible. And now that I knew that the time we had together was limited, I was holding on to it, trying to stretch it out, all the while wishing I’d appreciated what I’d had earlier.

~ Morgan Matson

The best part of having a relationship is getting to call the person or lay down next to them and tell them all the crazy things that happened to you all day long, and in the end that’s what it’s about, kids. It’s not about the sex, it’s not about the money that they give you or whatever. It’s not about how good-looking they are, it’s about, can they listen to you talk for hours and hours and hours about stupid shit that doesn't matter.

~ Tegan Quin