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Family Relationships Quotes

Browse 476 quotes about Family Relationships.

Family Relationships Quotes

“I realize it has taken the death of both my parents for me to finally begin to see who I am, but not through their eyes. I’ll never forget them; my parents I have been in lockstep ever since I was young child, but their words drowned out my own voice. I’m starting to come into my own. (240)”

GriefMemoirParentsGrief And LossFamily RelationshipsGrief QuotesSelf ActualizationGrief And Loss QuotesFamily ConflictSelf Actualization Quotes
Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery
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“Translation involves more than the deciphering of words, words strung together in sentences, in paragraphs, in dialogue, in the years of a life. After all, a machine can do that if you feed all the data into it. Translation also involves making sense of what’s left unspoken, those ellipses, blank spaces, the dot-dot-dots when you have to guess what’s happening in the person’s mind, what the silent messages mean. It calls for the translation of surrounding events, the cultural context, as well as the translation of nonverbal communication. What was being said through that certain look, that ever-so-tiny smile, that flash of a grimace? That spark of anger? Those sarcastic comments? Those prolonged silences? What did it all mean? (249)”

GriefGrief And LossFamily RelationshipsInheritanceGrief QuotesMemoir WritingTranslationGrief And Loss QuotesFamily ConflictTranslation Quotes
Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery
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“We no longer had a lingua franca after we moved there. We consisted of six people, our own little Tower of Babel… Six people speaking many different languages, none of them mutually intelligible. Six people bumping into each other in the dark, no longer able to understand each other, wounding one other in the process (257).”

GriefMemoirGrief And LossFamily RelationshipsInheritanceGrief QuotesTranslationGrief And Loss QuotesFamily ConflictTranslation Quotes
Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery
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“Admittedly, a number of the translations of my life, of what went on in Ivy Lodge, are loose at best, warranting multiple-choice answers, never ideal in the scientifically based world of translation. You're supposed to go from the source language (the language being translated) to the target language (the language being translated into). A translation is only good when the translator knows--or can surmise--the intention of the person being translated, understands with a fair amount of confidence the exact meaning of that source language. Maybe that's one problem with my attempts to translate my family. Maybe my parents remained unclear in their own minds what they wanted to say, what their words and behavior meant, what their underlying motivation was. In that case, it makes translation doubly difficult if the source of the words and events to be translated is lost in a sea of linguistic confusion. Translators need patterns to make sense out of foreign words, or it all becomes a hodgepodge of meaningless sounds and symbols. Chaos (256).”

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Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery
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“In addition to the physical aspects of the work, I'm here to recreate my own personal story, my own narrative. For years—a lifetime, really—when I thought about my life, I saw it through the lens of other people, usually my parents, sometimes my sib-lings. If they told me I was this, that, or the other type of person, I usually took their words at face value, even when the descriptions sounded negative, even when I fought their pronouncements. But translation is all about making decisions, hundreds, even thousands of decisions. Maybe a new way exists to look at myself, at my life. At long last, I’ll take those same words and events to come up with different meanings, different interpretations, ones I've reached on my own, stripping away others' interpretations of who I am. (9)”

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Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery
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“The translator in me--always at work, even in English-wants to understand the intent of his words. This is where the meaning must lie, right? With the filters turned off, the translator's mind is unfettered by others' words, actions, or opinions, or even by their mere presence. (15)”

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Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery
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“In my case, I felt like I'd been drowning in a sea of words, words that, more often than not, bore no resemblance to their dictionary definitions. What was the point of communicating if, inevitably, a subtext bubbled up, one I had trouble making sense of in my naïveté, in my confusion? What was the point if a word's meaning had been distorted to fit secret agendas, flip-flopped for unknown ulterior motives, withheld for other reasons? Translating what anyone said had become impossible for me, my work with languages, my love of words failing me when it came to my own family. All my dictionaries proved useless in trying to decipher a lifetime of communication fraught with subtexts buried beneath more subtexts. (134)”

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Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery
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“Why did she keep these random items? How did they make the cut? Maybe she felt it had to be her decision what to keep, what to discard, just as it's my turn now, my decision as I go room to room, playing God with my parents' possessions. (148)”

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Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery
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“When you're translating a document or a speech, if you don't have all the words, you don't have all the meaning. I'd only had my words thus far, my thoughts, not hers. That had given me an incomplete picture, one with pockets of omissions… (154)”

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Book:Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery
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“History is continuous. It flows through us, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. In a society with little history, in the sense of movements, events, inventions struggles and newnesses, when movement seems to be slow, the elderly are respected and useful, the keepers of custom: their children want to be like them. This is a conservative society, often a happy one because it is not fragmented, but it is no fun for the innovators, those with new ideas, In a society where historical events crowd in so fast that people cannot keep up with them - which is what most societies are like at present - the old are comparatively useless and only likely to be respected for certain kinds of success, not for qualities of wisdom. Family continuity is no longer sought after. The one thing children don't want is to be like their parents.”

ChildrenWisdomHistoryInnovationParentsSocial ChangeFamily RelationshipsCustomThe Elderly
Author:Naomi Mitchison
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“If Grandmother were still here, this trip wouldn't have been the disappointment I felt it was. She would have known what I needed. She had raised six children, with the help of the servants, mind you, but still, six children. I had two girls now; I couldn't imagine any more. Grandmother's strength and wisdom were undefeatable in an age that had taxed women in so many ways; I couldn't even begin to imagine how many.”

ChildrenFamilyMemoryGrandmotherFamily RelationshipsWomen S StrengthHistoric Fiction
Book:From Out of Feldspar
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“Should I talk to her friends?’ he asked softly, because he had to say something to take his mind away from the feel of her body against his and the rising desire to kiss her. ‘No, don’t,’ she turned her head and her mouth was suddenly tantalisingly close, lips moist and inviting. ‘Jax,’ he murmured. He smoothed hair from her brow. Her eyes met his, wide and surprised. She straightened, moved and his hand slipped from her shoulders. Mistake. Don’t make it again. She didn’t want more than comfort from him. Friends was as far they would go.”

ChildrenRomanceCrimeDangerSuspenseFamily RelationshipsAustralianAbduction
Book:Find Her
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“Why do you think, A.J.," they say in unison, "that you find these boys so attractive?" I didn't say that this fiery chemical explosion leaps from somewhere inside me. Parents don't want to hear these things. I shrugged and said nothing. "Maybe you should try sitting on the intensity," Mom suggests, "just until your feelings catch up with reality." "We could chain you to the water heater," Dad offers, "until these little moments pass." You see what I'm up against.”

HumorCommunicationParentsFamily RelationshipsTeenagersHormonesParental Advice
Author:Joan Bauer
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“It can be disconcerting when people around us change. Family members and especially parents frequently resist acknowledging transformation in other family members. Depending upon the nature of the personality modification, they might even resent if it a family member changes as any fundamental personality revision by a member of a family alters the group’s identity as well.”

ParentsBrothers And SistersFamily RelationshipsFamily MembersFamiliesSelf TransformationSelf IdentityGroup Identification
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“Some secret of nurture withered a generation or two before I arrived, if it had ever existed before among the poor, marginalized people on the edges of Europe from whom I descend. Both my parents grew up with a deep sense of poverty that was mostly emotional but that they imagined as material long after they clambered into the middle class, and so they were more like a pair of rivalrous older siblings than parents who see their children as extensions of themselves and their hopes. They were stuck in separateness. I didn't realize anything was odd until I was already on my own and found out that not everyone's parents cut them off financially as soon as the law allowed. I tried to leave home unsuccessfully at fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and did so successfully at seventeen, heading off to another country, as far away as I could go, and once I got there I realized I was more on my own than I had anticipated: I was henceforth entirely repsonsible for myself and thus began a few years of poverty.”

FamilyPovertyParentsComing Of AgeFamily Relationships27 28
Book:The Faraway Nearby
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“I was so ashamed for a mistake I made unknowingly when I was completely out of control and lost my mind for some reasons. I thought about to end my life next day at some point. I was struggling to cope with my pain, shame and thinking about others who I had hurt unintentionally. The worst moment came when people who I loved most had pulled out their support and threatens me to end relationships. Lesson learns hard way that people who are not with you at worst time of your life have no right to stand beside you when you are at best. Life goes on...........”

Life LessonsRegretFamily RelationshipsProblems In LifeMistakes We MakeRelationship ProblemsEnd Of Life IssuesUnknowingly
Author:Sammy Toora Powerlifter
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“Your god, sir, is the World. In my eyes, you, too, if not an infidel, are an idolater. I conceive that you ignorantly worship: in all things you appear to me too superstitious. Sir, your god, your great Bel, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon. You, and such as you, have raised him to a throne, put on him a crown, given him a sceptre. Behold how hideously he governs! See him busied at the work he likes best -- making marriages. He binds the young to the old, the strong to the imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius and fetters the dead to the living. In his realm there is hatred -- secret hatred: there is disgust -- unspoken disgust: there is treachery -- family treachery: there is vice -- deep, deadly, domestic vice. In his dominions, children grow unloving between parents who have never loved: infants are nursed on deception from their very birth: they are reared in an atmosphere corrupt with lies ... All that surrounds him hastens to decay: all declines and degenerates under his sceptre. Your god is a masked Death.”

DeathForceWomenMarriageSocietyExpectationsHatredInjusticeHypocrisyUnhappinessContemptDecayDemonsFamily RelationshipsScornIdolatryMatrimonyMarried LifeDiscordFamiliesSocial NormsCaptivityDisparityPreconceptionsViceWorldlinessDisgustDomestic LifeDisharmonyLovelessnessFalse BeliefUnfreedom
Book:Shirley
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