“The dining room overflows with love-made dishes-smoked turkey, collards, mac and cheese, okra and tomatoes.”
Source: Going Down Home with Daddy
“Omar doesn't have any children, either. I suppose the land is all we will leave behind. In that way it is both our parents and our children.
The land grows flowers for me to lay at the feet of Mother's grave, there under the big tree. I cut the flowers with scissors and carry them up there, but I am just a medium, a conduit, for that flow. It is really the land that is doing it.”
Source: The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness: Three Lyrical Short Stories of Texas, Appalachia, and the Untamed American West
“Your family loves you, and that's a kind of bond you can't force. It's a kind of love one doesn't find anywhere else. It can be overwhelming, but that's only because it's always honest. And being a part of that, even if only for a few days, meant...the world. More than you could ever know.”
Source: The Spanish Love Deception
“The most beautiful things are the ones that have to end. Sunsets, video games, taco night, roller coasters, and you. That's why they're beautiful, Elena. We know we don't get to keep them forever, so we have to really love them while we can.”
Source: Cancer Perks
“If your kids are consumers, which most of us raise our kids to be, because our culture raises us to be, then [passing inherited wealth] is a bad idea. We consume and eat and fill ourselves with every technological, sexual, cultural, societal, and emotional pleasure possible. That is the goal of life. And if that's our way of life, then yes, it's a horrible idea to give someone an asset, simply for them to consume and destroy it... In business, passing assets is seen in the opposite way. This is how you build really strong companies. Some of the strongest companies in the world have collected and built and expanded resources every generation. So why is it seen as a bad idea in families? Here's why: business still center themselves around mission, whereas modern families are built around consumption. When mission is the focus, then building to pass something on is the goal. And a great idea.... If you believe we are primarily meant to consume things, then resources become a burden - as they will only stuff that person with more and more. If you believe we are meant to produce things and steward things, then more resources should mean more mission and multiplication of what you're already doing.”
Source: Take Back Your Family: From the Tyrants of Burnout, Busyness, Individualism, and the Nuclear Ideal
“I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is 6 to 5 against.”
Source: Guys and Dolls: The Stories of Damon Runyon
“-and the house left its own echos in me. I carry them inside me still. I’m certain I carry my mama and papa in my cells, but also the lavender, the orange blossoms, my mother’s sheets, my grandmother’s calculated footsteps, the toasted pecans, the clunk of the treacherous tile, the sugar caramelizing, the cajeta, the mad cicadas, the smells of old wood, and the polished clay floors. I’m also made of oranges—green, sweet, or rotten; of orange-blossom honey and royal jelly. I’m made of everything that touched my senses during that time and entered the part of my brain where I keep my memories.”
Source: The Murmur of Bees
“Something [Williams] is really good at is shutting it off and focusing on family time and personal time.”
“The family was sacrificed for the "mission" without realizing that the mission, once you are married and have kids, I'd argue, is never solitary. God doesn't give individual missions to teams.... In any team, the members have different assignments. But all of it is under the umbrella.”
Source: Take Back Your Family: From the Tyrants of Burnout, Busyness, Individualism, and the Nuclear Ideal
“I always say it’s because my family is enough, with all their smothering love and unwavering support; I never felt like anything was missing.”