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

“My entire life's purpose, keeping Mom alive and happy, was for nothing. All those years I spent focusing on her, all the time I spent orienting my every thought and action toward what I thought would please her most, were pointless. Because now she's gone.

I tried desperately to understand and know my mother--what made her sad, what made her happy, and on and on and on--at the expense of ever really knowing myself. Without Mom around, I don't know who I am. And I certainly don't know what to wish for.”
― Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died

“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'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

“This was a typical statement from my mother: lucid, opinionated, explicitly impatient of opposing views. Her dominance of the family, and her certainties about the world, made things usefully clear in childhood, restrictive in adolescence, and grindingly repetitive in adulthood.”
― Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of

“Dad always said don't take it personally.

Dad told you that because it was what you needed to hear. Dad always told me if a bird flies over you and shits on your shoulder, take it personally.”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“Russell’s lips were just framing an expression of disapproval when Grace stepped around Violet. His pupils expanded, making his dark eyes look even darker. There was something almost greedy in this look he bestowed on Grace.
--Farewell My Life: Buona Notte Vita Mia”
― Cynthia Sally Haggard, Farewell My Life: Buona Notte Vita Mia

“The father-daughter wound is not only an event happening in the lives of individual women. It is a condition of our culture as well.² Whenever there is a patriarchal authoritarian attitude which devalues the feminine by reducing it to a number of roles or qualities which come, not from woman’s own experience, but from an abstract view of her—there one finds the collective father overpowering the daughter, not allowing her to grow creatively from her own essence.”
― Linda Schierse Leonard, The Wounded Woman: Healing the Father-Daughter Relationship

“I'm grateful for the myriad ways you did not abuse me. I was never starved or kept inside a cage or repeatedly burned with cigarettes. I guess it just sucks how a lot of parents like their children but you didn't like me. It also sucks how even though I didn't really like you, I never stopped wanting you to like me, because you never cared if I liked you or didn't.”
― Alissa Nutting, Made for Love

“Sometimes I look at her and I just hate her. And then I hate myself for feeling that. I'm worthless without her. She's everything to me. Then I swallow the feeling I wish I hadn't had, tell her 'I love you so much, Nonny Mommy,' and I move on, pretending that it never happened. I've pretended for my job for so long, and for my mom for so long, and now I'm starting to think I'm pretending for myself too.”
― 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

“What would happen if he returned and asked permission to be Grace’s suitor? Well, she would not stand for it. Per l’amor di Dio, for the love of God, Grace was only seventeen, and it was the height of rudeness to abandon the mother for the daughter. If he did return, she would see that he was sent away.
--Farewell My Life: Buona Notte Vita Mia”
― Cynthia Sally Haggard, Farewell My Life: Buona Notte Vita Mia

“I intend to marry her,” he said, without turning around.
“Not if I have any say in it.”
“What makes you think she will listen to you? You have nothing to offer her. I have enough funds to provide for a wife and family. I could take her to Italy, to Venice. She could perform with the best musicians in the world.”
“You are not marrying her.”
“How are you going to stop me?”
“You will have to walk over my corpse.

--Farewell My Life, Buona Notte Vita Mia”
― Cynthia Sally Haggard, Farewell My Life: Buona Notte Vita Mia

“Would you turn your back on your parent?’
“I would run my parents over with a semitrailer for a lukewarm cup of tea, and I’m not even a tea person .” Christian, Ruthless Rival”
― Lj shein

“When she notices my silence she goes quiet and sighs. I guess she, too, gets fed up with the weight of incomprehension. I guess that on top of seeming like a sister who is detached, dejected and discourteous, I also come off as an arrogant person. Kinship isn't enough for her, either, of course it isn't. In cases like ours, getting along isn't a question of magic or chemistry or affinity, but of tenacity, toughness and torturous toiling.”
― Margarita García Robayo, La encomienda

“[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

“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

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