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Family Quotes
"A rubber plant is just about the ideal family."
11
"For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light."
11
"The description of Huck's father grabbed my full attention, and I glanced up at the book in my teacher's hand as if to double check. My eyes bulged reflexively. Huck's father was an abusive drunk just like mine. The boy was hopeful that a corpse found near the river was actually his dad, but it turned out not to be. It was spooky how high my hopes rose for the boy, and then sank so utterly low when the body was discovered to be a female in disguise. I should've mourned for the woman, but it was the boy I felt bad for."
11
"Do you know what she did today?" He leaned confidentially across the table, pointing at the dishes in the sink. "She went to the market and left all the breakfast dishes there and said she'd do them later. I know what she wanted. She expected me to do them. Well, I'll fool her. I'll leave them just where they are."
11
"They (mothers-in-law) never leave when they say they will. When my mother-in-law visits, the mice throw themselves at the cat, begging to be eaten."
11
"It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives."
11
"Mothers care in volumes of tears and earnestness of prayers and a depth of emotion others cannot fathom."
11
"This imbalance causes resentments within the over-responsible and dependency with the irresponsible person and this dynamic becomes the destructive life-pattern not conducive to happy families."
10
"My family is my vulnerability."
10
"A new baby is the beginning of a new universe-his own unique universe."
10
"Could it be? Samantha Kingston? Home? On a Friday? I roll my eyes. "I don't know. Did you do a lot of acid in the sixties? Could be a flashback. "I was two years old in 1960. I came too late for the party. He leans down and pecks me on the head. I pull away out of habit. "And I'm not even going to ask how you know about acid flashbacks. "What's an acid flashback? Izzy crows. "Nothing, my dad and I say at the same time, and he smiles at me."
10
"Be near your brothers. Not just one, but both of them."
10
"Family is a place where love never ends."
10
"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."
10
"Tate lays her head on my arm, and we both watch her.Our daughter.I love you so much, Sam.I'm looking down at the perfection we created when it hits me.It's all worth it.It's the beautiful moments like these that make up for the uglylove."
10
"No one loves me, - no one cares for me, but you, mother."
10
"To the loyal and to the blood-lovers, in the good families and in the fiery dynasties, life is family and family is life. It is the same people who give advice and their vices to live well who turn out to be the ones who give resource and reason to live long."
10
"I went over to see Marina two or three or four times a week. I knew as long as I could see the girl I would be all right. Soon after, I got a letter from Fay. She and the child were living in a hippie commune in New Mexico. It was a nice place, she said. Marina would be able to breathe there. She enclosed a little drawing the girl had made for me."
10
"A house doesn't become a home until love moves in."
10
"Both my parents are therapists, which means that I am really goddamned well adjusted."
10
"A wise woman protects her kids. A wiser woman hangs out with police officers, retired FBI agents and private investigators."
10
"If something happened to Gillian, I'd rip the world down to save her, even if she spat in my face when I did. That's what parenthood means."
10
"My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. I can see her peace. She did not cop out on herself. The benefits of her choices are massive-a long, stable marriage to a man she still calls her best friend; a family that has extended now into grandchildren who adore her; a certainty in her own strength. Maybe some things were sacrificed, and my dad made his sacrifices, too-but who amongst us lives without sacrifice?"
10
"I, um, I thought you might want this back.I pull out the battered old teddy bear and hold it toward him. He frowns and shakes his head and doesn't reach for it, and I feel like he's punched me in the gut.Then my baby brother slaps that damned bear out of my hand and crushes his face against my chest, and beneath the odors of sweat and strong soap I can smell it, his smell, Sammy's, my brother's."
10
"What is certain is that he [the baby] has too much attention from the one person who is entirely at his disposal. The intimacy between mother and child is not sustaining and healthy. The child learns to exploit his mother's accessibility, badgering her with questions and demands which are not of any real consequence to him, embarrassing her in public, blackmailing her into buying sweets and carrying him."
10
"I suppose that it is not so easy to go home and it takes a bit of time to make a son out of a stranger."
10
"It was my duty as a mother to invade your privacy and search your room. I'm just glad you weren't hiding an illegal drug."
10
"He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father."
10
"Love, my child, is a thing that every mother learns; it is not born with a baby, but made; and for eleven years, I have learned to love you as my son."
10
"It's possible to love your grandmother for years and years without really knowing anything about her."
10
"I told her if she really cared about me, then she'd let me do whatever I wanted for my birthday, just like Mom did when I was twelve."What happened when you were twelve?"Oh, Mom offered to take us all out for dinner-us girls, Dad was out of town-to celebrate, but I didn't want to. This book I'd been waiting for had just come out, and the only thing I wanted to do was read it all night."My God, I said, touching the top of her nose. "You're adorable.She swatted me away. "Anyway, Carly and Zoe really wanted to go out so that they could score a meal, but Mom just said, 'It's her birthday. Let her do whatever she wants.'"Your mom is cool."
10
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