Quotes about family

It was easy to see how one could think of the family as a single terrible creature stretching back through time, some genetic flaw or chemical magic binding the spirit to the blood.

Blood is blood, you know? There’s too much shared history and too many cross-connecting bonds to ever totally extract yourself from that half-smothering, half-supporting, muddled net called family.

"Do you see my granddaughter?...Isn't it a miracle that we can visit with all our kin, simply by looking into this face?" (chapter 14, p103)

When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse, unruly strands and attempting to bring them into unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women in your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes, and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers. (epilogue)

It is not permissible for us to go on destroying the family life when we know that we are destroying it.

It was as easy to be alone with six kin as it is to be alone by yourself, and maybe easier.

Life was about spending time together, about having the time to walk together holding hands, talking quietly as they watched the sun go down. It wasn't glamorous, but it was, in many ways, the best that life had to offer. Wasn't that how the old saying went? Who, on their deathbed, ever said they wished they had worked harder? Or spent less time enjoying a quiet afternoon? Or spent less time with their family?

No, there's no experience quite like having children, and despite the challenges we once faced, I've considered myself blessed because of the family we created.

I espouse reproductive libertarianism, because when everyone has the broadest choice, love itself expands. The affection my family have found in one another is not a better love, but it is another love, and just as species diversity is crucial to sustain the planet, this diversity strengthens the ecosphere of kindness. The road less traveled by, as it turns out, leads to pretty much the same place.

...whereas there still lingers some absurd prejudice against living on one's friends, no limits are set, either by society or by one's own conscience, to the amount one may impose upon one's relatives.

When the cold wind blows the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.

We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance on in our steads.