Family Dynamics Quotes

“You boys must always remember your roots, everything that makes you Puerto Rican. Don’t ever lose the stain of the plantain,” Isa said.”
― Margarita Barresi, A Delicate Marriage

“When Cindy’s crying slowed to convulsive gasps, she picked up Floppy and they got in bed and she looked at the picture of her and her father at Lake Barkley. “Good night, Daddy. I love you!”
― Shafter Bailey, Cindy Divine: The Little Girl Who Frightened Kings

“Okay then, the blood has dried into the shirt so as I cut it away, it may sting some as I pull it away. Can you be brave for me?”
― R. Gerry Fabian, Just Out Of Reach

“A tribe needed many stabilizers, as many as they could get.”
― Jennifer Mugrage, The Strange Land

“Not many adults could have expressed themselves like she did about her fears of returning to old and dangerous habits”
― Lin Wilder, Plausible Liars: A Dr. Lindsey McCall Medical Mystery 5

“I'm sorry that I'm not Emily. But I was never supposed to be. Took me a while to learn that, and I hope you can see it too. I spent my whole life waiting because I was trying to live a future that was never mine. And I did it because I wanted you to be proud of me. To just once say “Good Job, Jet.” I needed it, lived for it, and I don't think that was healthy, for either of us.”
― Holly Jackson, Not Quite Dead Yet

“She gave me breast and vaginal exams until I was seventeen years old. These 'exams' made my body stiff with discomfort. I felt violated, yet I had no voice, no ability to express that. I was conditioned to believe any boundary I wanted was a betrayal of her, so I stayed silent. Cooperative.

When I was six years old, she pushed me into a career I didn't want. I'm grateful for the financial stability that career has provided me, but not much else. I was not equipped to handle the entertainment industry and all of its competitiveness, rejection, stakes, harsh realities, fame. I needed that time, those years, to develop as a child. To form my identity. To grow. I can never get those years back.

She taught me an eating disorder when I was eleven years old--an eating disorder that robbed me of my joy and any amount of free-spiritedness that I had.”
― Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died

“I want to love him but I often find myself wishing he could just be an asshole all the time. This way I wouldn't have all these inner battles with myself. I learn to navigate my way through shattered expectations and constant disappointments by putting an impenetrable wall up between us. Every time I let my guard down, I'm quickly reminded why my defenses were up in the first place. It's nearly impossible for me to flourish in an inconsistent hostile environment, especially when my own growth is so intertwined with his. I'm forced to face the unsettling reality that the people who are supposed to protect us are sometimes the same people we need protection from.”
― Julia Fox, Down the Drain

“That day, when she met her father, Trisha learned to smile even as her heart broke—it was also the day she came to hate the color red.”
― Scarlet Ibis James, Scarlet Yearnings: Stories of Love and Desire

“If this life has taught me anything at all, it is how to stand tall with the few who stand with me.”
― Deanna L. Lawlis

“Sometimes I wish I had no empathy, not so it would hurt others, but so it wouldn't hurt me.”
― Deanna L. Lawlis

“When we were younger, it was usual sister stuff that we fought over: clothes, the bigger room, our parents’ attention. Now we have different clothing styles, we have had the same rooms for over a decade, and we do not care for our mom’s or dad’s attention. …. We do not get through our family disasters together; we push each other closer to the fire.”
― Brigid Au, Tied Together

“He'd always been able to make he doubt what she knew to be true. Bullying and control and egotism all mixed up with incredible love.”
― Adrienne Brodeur, Little Monsters

“[T]hey'll all celebrate and toast each other, toast the small ways they can still care for and love one another, no matter how awful at it all of them are.”
― Lynn Steger Strong, Flight

“Hero had the sense that Pol's Ilocano was stuck in time, that he only wanted to speak it with the people he'd always spoken it to, but even when Hero and Pol spoke in Ilocano with each other in California, there was a playacting stiffness in their voices that hadn't been there back in Vigan, when Hero used to hang on every word.”
― Elaine Castillo, America Is Not the Heart

“We need to engage with the family for deeper insight into the dysfunctions and dynamics that led to a decision to make permanent body changes with surgery. Taking the easy route of writing a prescription for testosterone after one or two short visits, instead of careful evaluation and exploration, is woefully inadequate.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“A wise parent thinks like a root, sustaining not only its trunk but also ensuring that the furthest green leaf is nurtured.”
― Nitzan Hamburg

“You are eager to fight for your ancestors, but you can barely stand the relatives that are alive.”
― Daksh Tyagi, Nonsense

“My best friend would say I had Daddy issues. Yeah, I’d say so too.”
― Scarlet Ibis James, Scarlet Yearnings: Stories of Love and Desire

“I sighed, realizing that in the few hours I'd returned to the bosom of my family, I'd scarcely finished my wedding punch before being stripped of my confidence in my appearance, the pride of my vocation, and the unqualified joy of seeing my sister married off to her respectable dentist. Was it any wonder I'd flown the nest at my very first opportunity?”
― Stephanie Dray, Becoming Madam Secretary

“Annem ise çok sinirlenmediği sürece anne demezdi. Bir laf sokma, bir iyileşme sancısının dile gelişi, bir intikamın sessizce alınışı gibi “Anne!” derdi.”
― Gülsel Ceren Güneş, Önden Üç Bilet

“Onun hayatı için “aile”; evde ihtiyacı olmayan, kullanmayacağı ama çok da rahatsız olmayacağı bir eşya gibiydi.”
― Gülsel Ceren Güneş, Önden Üç Bilet

“You are not responsible for regulating everyone else's emotions.”
― Deanna L. Lawlis

“Healthy families are sustained by honesty; unsafe systems are threatened by it.”
― Deanna L. Lawlis

“But partly it was my own professional background, my training in psychology, that rather than helping me—made it almost impossible for me to face what was happening. Back when I studied psychology in the 1950s, there was only one cause for all mental illnesses, even the most severe: a faulty upbringing. Everything was tied to the way you were raised. There were different schools of thought, of course. Some practitioners followed a Freudian model where understanding the id, the ego and the superego gave the answer to everything. Some followed Jung, with his emphasis on unconscious myths. But everyone believed that it was early life experiences that were behind mental disorders. A patient with serious mental problems had been subject at an early age to unacceptable pressures, to confusing messages, or to some destructive behavior on the part of the parents.”
― Lori Schiller, The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness

“AI is not just software—it’s infrastructure, people, and responsibility.”
― Gin Nikoloff, A Smaller Generation, A Greater Responsibility: America's Strength in an Age of AI, Infrastructure, and Workforce Change

“The house knew before anyone else, she wouldn't make it out alive.”
― Hope Cook, Here She Lies

“I was foolish to worry. As if she would make some final rash, dramatic gesture and fling herself into the sea. The women who I come from are not fanciful. They are blunt, easily offended, and resolute in their self-deceptions. But at the end of the day, they take life at its word.”
― Marisa Silver, At Last

“Clare's family were big on blood. At family gatherings, non-blood relatives hung in the corner as far away from view as possible, like dejected bats.”
― Cath Weeks, The Mood Ring

“A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.” ~ Paulo Coelho

"We are used to thinking in terms of what we can teach our children. Maybe we need to ask ourselves what we may learn from them." ~ Piero Ferrucci

“I am thankful for my struggle because without it, I wouldn’t have stumbled across my strength.”
- Alexandra Elle”
― Piero Ferrucci