Listen to me: die after me, all right? I don’t care what else you do, where you go, how you screw up your life, just… survive. Outlive me, please.

I hated this love that I had for my family—love that demanded my time and energy, that sought to control my life down to every thought and action.I now realize that it was not love but an unhealthy attachment, born out of a need for security and a sense of duty.

I love you enough to never make you choose.

Often the truth is in front of your face, but your eyes and heart are so full of lies that you can’t see it.

The thing about families is that you rarely get to choose them since you tend to be born into one and be a part of it. The family, on the other hand, tends to choose you and become a part of you, whether or not you grow to like it or will yourself to want.

Jerome said, It’s like, a family doesn’t work anymore when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone, You know?

All this family shit! Harry said. How can you reinvent your life if the original versions won’t leave you alone?

Is this what family is like: the feeling that everyone’s connected, that with one piece missing, the whole thing’s broken?

You and your siblings are the most precious part of my life. And of all my children, you have the most potential to go anywhere you wish in this world – your test scores and grades have always been among the highest of your peers. But it’s clear now that you cannot reach your full...

But we left camp after a while and we was driving in a real spooky place cause all the roads up near camp are dark and in the woods and we had to drive for a while to get to a highway cause there was no street lights or anything and nothing but woods and...

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

I cannot stress enough the perils of your friends marrying or becoming court inventors. One day you are all a society of outlaws, adventurous comrades and companions who will be pushing off somewhere or other when things become tiresome; you have all the world to choose from, just by looking at the map… And then,...

On closer examination, we are simply a banal tragedy spread over two generations.

We can have a large impact on the prevention and amelioration of abuse, drug problems, violence, mental health problems, and dysfunction in families.

No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows it’s own weaknesses, the exact placement of the heart. The tragedy is that one can still live with the force of hatred, feel infuriated that once you are born to another, that kinship lasts through life and death, immutable, unchanging, no matter how...

Forgive me, my sons. I’ve been defeated by this despicable idiot. This is as far as I go.I leave everything to you.You have my gratitude. Farewell, my sons.

I’ll be your family now,” he says. “I love you,” I say. (….)He stares at me. I wait with my hands clutching his arms for stability as he considers his response. He frowns at me. “Say it again.””Tobias,” I say, “I love you.

Hearing him talk about his mother, about his intact family, makes my chest hurt for a second, like someone pierced it with a needle.

It has been said that as goes the family, so goes the world. It can also be said that as goes the father, so goes the family.

If your love for another person doesn’t include loving yourself then your love is incomplete.

Finally he asks, “What if that’s not enough? What if I need something else?”And she replies, “Whatever you need, I will find a way to get it to you. I will give you the moon, and more.

I understand that you are under a lot of pressure and that it’s hard being a bride. That is all well and good. But it does not, ever, entitle you to be rude, selfish, uncaring, and generally obnoxious to me or Haven or anyone else. We’ve been very patient with you because we’re your family...

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed there, regardless.

The most confused you will ever get is when you try to convince your heart and spirit of something your mind knows is a lie.

You can find anyone that will tell you what you want to hear, but the only one worth valuing is the one that tells you what you need to learn.

People say love is weak, but they’re wrong: love is strong. In nearly everyone it trumps all other things – patriotism and ambition, religion and upbringing. And every kind of love – the epic and the small, the noble and the base – the one that a parent has for their child is the greatest...

You can’t fight hatred with hatred and expect anyone to listen to you. You can only try to lessen it with humor, wit, truth and commonsense. If that doesn’t work run like hell, while they throw rocks at you.

When you invite people to share in your miracle, you create future allies during rough weather.

If you never learned to hold onto someone, how could it possibly hurt now to let them go?

Words can’t fix my life.Words can’t give me a family.Words can’t do jack.You may be a teacher, Ms. Leone, but face it: You don’t know squat.

A woman or man of value doesn’t love you because of what he or she wants you to be or do for them. He or she loves you because your combined souls understand one another, complements each other, and make sense above any other person in this world. You each share a part of their...

When you lose your ego, you win. It really is that simple.

Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past.

When relationships fail it is usually because someone chooses not to show up for the battle.

If you truly loved someone you won’t become their enemy. You will become their guardian angel.

“At Christmas, tea is compulsory. Relatives are optional.

Sometimes you can’t figure out the truth because you’re asking people that are emotionally or socially invested in you to be brutally honest. Often family or friends will tell you what you want to hear, or what they want to believe because of their emotional investment in the situation. Instead of circling the drain with...

A best friend is the only one that walks into your life when the world has walked out.

When people want to win they will go to desperate extremes. However, anyone that has already won in life has come to the conclusion that there is no game. There is nothing but learning in this life and it is the only thing we take with us to the grave—knowledge. If you only understood that...

Spending time with the ones who are dear to you is like being in a dream, is it not?

My mother always pouted that it was actually her paintings and not her charm, her beauty or her sass that made him fall in love with her. He’d always insisted that it was definitely her sass. I knew the truth. He fell for all those things, and when she died, it was like someone had...

Eby wanted to say so much to her. She wanted to say that waking up is the most important part of grieving, that so many women in their family failed to do it, and she was proud of Kate for fighting her way back. But Eby didn’t say anything. She could fix a lot of...

My father could talk about the Romany way of life and its culture. He could talk about freedom and the Scottish spirit. But that was all he could talk about. I was desperate for someone to talk to but there was just nobody there.

At length, when I considered it, I realized that the best of my actions were small things. Picking flowers and cooking food for my mother when she had been unwell, spending an afternoon with the children, sending money to my sister or kissing Henry’s tiny head as he slept in the nursery before I left....

The bonds between a family are strange indeed.

We have a mental health system that is dominated by political and hidden forces that keep us stagnated and unable to see real, lasting change.

In the future if my mother tries to shame me with her disapproval, I will let her know in no uncertain terms that I reject her and all of her codependent baggage. I am Codependent No More.

He was not being courageous as he bore the freezing stream for his wife and children. He simply chose between the lesser of two evils—the pain and suffering he would endure in the river, a physical pain that he could stand to bear, or the pain and suffering he would feel if he had to...

Raised on a cotton farm in rural Georgia, as many white/negro families did to make a meager living, my daddy had a saying.’All a poor man has is his good name and good credit. God help him if he looses either of those.’I still believe that.

Amidst the chaos of the cities, a part of you always yearns for the silence of the woods.