Family Quotes

The core of any family is what is changeless, what is going to be there──shared vision and values.

~ Stephen R. Covey

It didn't matter how big our house was, it mattered that there was love in it.

~ Peter Buffett

If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child.

~ Linda Sunshine

Leah looked at her parents, lost in their own fantasies, and decided that the three of them were a pretty pathetic family - but she wasn't sure who was more pathetic: the dateless girl spending the night of the big dance by herself in her bedroom, or the parents who foolishly believed a boy would arrive on their doorstep with flowers, a limo, and a promise to rescue their daughter from her solitude.

~ J.m. Reep

How I love them. How good they are. They endure endless hours of me talking about the future. They keep me near and at the same time bid me farewell. That is what real love is.

~ Carole Maso

My house feels like home when you're there.

~ Susan Richards Shreve

Making amends is not only saying the words but also being willing to listen to how your behavior caused another’s pain, and then the really hard part…changing behavior.

~ David W. Earle

And that is how Goodwin problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room of my life. It was practically our family pet.

~ Cecelia Ahern

Responsible parenting is NOT a crime. Responsible parenting is most valuable tool of our society.

~ Mick Karabegovic

I remember Mum repeatedly telling us we had good hearts and good brains. When she said that we'd say 'thanks' and it might have sounded as if we were thanking her for seeing us that way but actually we were thanking her for giving us whatever goodness was in us.

~ Helen Oyeyemi

While you've been gadding about the countryside, we've held a meeting, and we've all of us decided that you must go.'In short, we've voted you out of the family,' Daffy said. 'It was unanimous.

~ Alan Bradley

The soldier had stamped my passport FAMILY in heavy black capital letters and I checked it now for reassurance and because I liked how fierce the word looked

~ Meg Rosoff

Remember to say I love you to family and friends not just your significant other.

~ Vianka Van Bokkem

And here is the shocking plot twist: as farmers produced those extra calories, the food industry figured out how to get them into the bodies of people who didn't really want to eat 700 more calories a day.

~ Barbara Kingsolver

The most important thing in life is your family. There are days you love them, and others you don't. But, in the end, they're the people you always come home to. Sometimes it's the family you're born into and sometimes it's the one you make for yourself.

~ Candice Bergen

How shall I ever learn who I am when there is so much of me that belongs to someone else?

~ Madeline Claire Franklin

Sometimes, though, you have to do things for family, even if you'd rather not.

~ Patricia C. Wrede

Single parents - both women and men - can play as critical a role as the traditional two-parent family, and gay and lesbian parents can, and do, raise happy, resilient children. When it comes to family life, form is not merely as important as content. Feeling loved and supported, nurtured and safe, is far more critical than the 'package' it comes in.

~ Michael S. Kimmel

Where I come from, family's defined as those who don't screw you over a paycheck. Blood makes no difference. If you can trust them with your life and know that they'll be there come whatever hell rains down, then they're your family.

~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Tape the sound of the moon fading at dawn. Give it to your mother to listen to when she's in sorrow.

~ Yoko Ono

Maybe children just want whatever it is they don't get. And then they grow up and give their children what they wanted, be it silence or information, affection or independence--so that child, in turn, craves something else. With every generation the pendulum swings from opposite to opposite, stillness and peace so elusive.

~ Laura Moriarty

I was also sick of my neighbors, as most Parisians are. I now knew every second of the morning routine of the family upstairs. At 7:00 am alarm goes off, boom, Madame gets out of bed, puts on her deep-sea divers’ boots, and stomps across my ceiling to megaphone the kids awake. The kids drop bags of cannonballs onto the floor, then, apparently dragging several sledgehammers each, stampede into the kitchen. They grab their chunks of baguette and go and sit in front of the TV, which is always showing a cartoon about people who do nothing but scream at each other and explode. Every minute, one of the kids cartwheels (while bouncing cannonballs) back into the kitchen for seconds, then returns (bringing with it a family of excitable kangaroos) to the TV. Meanwhile the toilet is flushed, on average, fifty times per drop of urine expelled. Finally, there is a ten-minute period of intensive yelling, and at 8:15 on the dot they all howl and crash their way out of the apartment to school.” (p.137)

~ Stephen Clarke

What I love most about my home is who I share it with.

~ Tad Carpenter

They seem nice, though, your sisters, really,' Porcelain remarked.'Ha!' I said. 'Shows what little you know! I hate them!''Hate them? I should have thought you'd love them.''Of course I love them,' I said.... 'That's why I'm so good at hating them.

~ Alan Bradley

Trolls have a longstanding animosity for goats--Who's that trip-tapping across my bridge!?--and this led me to think that perhaps trolls are related to goats, since it seems a lot more plausible to me that your relatives would make you insane than some random hooved mammal, however ecologically destructive it might be. What if trolls evolved from goats? Or, no, better yet, what if goats evolved from trolls? Or were domesticated from trolls by human shepherds? And the trolls despise their domesticated cousins as a disgrace to the once-proud troll race, (much as I assume wolves would despise Chihuahuas if they ever gave them much thought) and eat them at every opportunity.

~ Ursula Vernon

I thought about the earth then, really thought about it, the tsunami's and earthquakes and volcanoes, all the horrors I haven't witnessed but have changed my life, the lives of everyone I know, all the people I'll never know. I thought about life without the sun, the moon, stars, without flowers and warm days in May. I thought about a year ago and all the good things I'd taken for granted and all the unbearable things that had replaced those simple blessings. And even though I hated the thought of crying in from of Syl, tears streamed down my face.

~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Then Henry speaks again. Did he do it?I turn to him slowly. Does it matter?

~ Jodi Picoult

They're the perfect loving fam'ly, so adoring...And I love them ev'ry day of ev'ry week.So my son's a little shit, my husband's boring,And my daughter, though a genius, is a freak.

~ Brian Yorkey

I looked into her eyes, and saw my own staring back, the same peculiar shade, pale grey, flecked with yellow, rimmed with black. Now I knew the nature of her debt. It had weighed on her conscience for fourteen years. I was looking into the eyes of mother and I knew that I would never see her again.

~ Celia Rees

The lamp sizzled as it burned. It made everything seem close and safe, a little family circle they all knew and trusted. Outside this circle lay everything that was strange and frightening, and the darkness seemed to reach higher and higher and further and further away, right to the end of the world.

~ Tove Jansson

Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they aged, to protect them from harm. A moral coward, she kept her distance.

~ Joyce Carol Oates

This was not a good idea coming home for Christmas. I'm too old. Years ago, coming back from schools or trips, I always expected some sort of new perspective or fresh insight about the family on returning. That doesn't happen anymore-the days of revelation about my parents, at least, are over... its time to move on. I think we'd all appreciate that.

~ Douglas Coupland

What I hope you'll remember, Grace-is that all your life there will be people who have more than you-and people who have less. Grace hung her head. What's really important,'Miss Louise went on to say,'are the connections you have with the people you love. Your family, your friends, Grace-truly, those are the things that matter. Those are the things that will always matter the most.

~ Priscilla Cummings

THE UNFORGIVENTell me if you've ever had to deal with these kinds of people:The kind who take and don't give.The kind to whom you give and give,And they keep asking.The kind to whom you give and give and they say you gave nothing.The kind whom have never offered anything,But act like they're the ones providingEVERYTHING.The kind you give and give,But take more than you can give.And when they have already taken everything,They get mad at you when you say you haveNothing more to give.The unforgiving,The misgiving,Wastefully living -And selfishly driven.The rat that never gives back,Yet is so quick to attack -Because they think the wordTAKINGSeriously meansGIVING.

~ Suzy Kassem

They do not love, that do not show their love.

~ William Shakespeare

...; Clary saw the group of lycanthropes look up, alert as a group of hunting dogs senting game. She turned- And saw Luke, tired and bloodstained, coming through the double doors of the Hall. She ran toward him. Forgetting how upset she'd been when he'd left, and forgetting how angry he'd been with her for bringing them here, forgetting everything but how glad she was to see him. He looked surprised for a moment as she barreled toward him- then he smiled, and put his arms out, and picked her up as he hugged her, the way he'd done when she'd been very small. He smelled like blood and flannel and smoke, and for a moment she closed her eyes, thinking of the way Alec had grabbed onto Jace the moment he'd seen him in the Hall, because that was what you did with family when you'd been worried about them, you grabbed them and held on to them and told them how much they'd pissed you off, and it was okay, becaused no matter how angry you got, they still belonged to you. And what she had said to Valentine was true. Luke was her family.

~ Cassandra Clare

He laughs. And in his laugh I hear bliss. I hear feet dancing, the rush of skirts twirling. The sound of children.Is that the first sign of love?You hear in the person you're destined to love the sound of those yet to be born.

~ Alyson Richman

You can't force folks to have good sense, even if they're family. Maybe especially then.

~ Patricia C. Wrede

You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?

~ Homer

I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.

~ Koren Zailckas