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Parents Quotes

“These rocks are the church where I knelt in black worsted silk beside my mother. Her shoulders sharp beneath my embrace. My mother: a solid wailing. These rocks are the soil where she kneels before the whorls of roses, kneeing before that box as if it were my father's grave. The closed anemones offer their sticky blossoms as the tide washes toward me. Small bits of the coast meet my skin, scraping my iron onto my knees.”

ParentsBeachMarine Life
Book:Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire
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“There's a saying: those who do not swim deep in the waters from which they came cannot arrive in the oceans they hope to go. My parents began an ocean away and arrived in a land of lakes and snow. I've been back to their waters (is it mine, too?) but, wasn't a good swimmer. Everyone spoke underwater; I could only hold my breath to listen for so long. I did learn the water carries its own song.”

OceanImmigrationParentsSwimWaters
Book:Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire
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“I had to leave my parents to love them again. I had to move across the country to appreciate that I actually had any pull toward them - that I needed them. I had to get away from them in order to come back to them. I'd like to say they did the best they could, but that couldn't have been their best. I wasn't doing my best either, so the idea that everyone is always doing the best they can is a trope. Some people are just interested in surviving; doing their best doesn't even occur to them.”

ParentsDoing The Best You Can
Book:Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and you too!
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“My relationship with my father had always been about my version of things; I never contemplated what might have happened in his life to make him act the way he did. I never considered his story. I was a child, yes, but then I was an adult. It's hard for me to have sympathy for my father because a lot of his behavior I find inexcusable, but it's important for me to look at his story as independent from my own, and try to have a little empathy. I had never thought about being his child. I thought about him being my father, but never the other way around. Empathy. We both had none...I don't know if it was the best he could do, but I also don't know that it wasn't...I told him that I now understood my father's limitations along with my own. I thought our relationship was about me showing him how great I was, when truly he was most likely trying to prove to me how great he was. He was wondrously obsessed with himself, as I was with his affection for me. Today I'm able to say with confidence that I do love my father. I don't know how much I like his behavior, but in the end, isn't love more valuable than like?”

Parents
Book:Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and you too!
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“And I think now, as my fiftieth birthday draws near, about the American novelist Thomas Wolfe, who was only thirty-eight years old when he died. He got a lot of help in organizing his novels from Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons. I have heard that Perkins told him to keep in mind as he wrote, as a unifying idea, a hero’s search for a father. It seems to me that really truthful American novels would have the heroes and heroines alike looking for mothers instead. This needn’t be embarrassing. It’s simply true. A mother is much more useful. I wouldn’t feel particularly good if I found another father.”

WritingRelationshipsFamilyParentsMothersFathers
Book:Breakfast Of Champions
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“I realize now, the life 
of an étranger is much like being the only child of older parents who hold tons of cocktail parties. You’re embarrassed for being there and it’s obvious you stand out. You’re treated (often) like a child. You don’t know the formal codes and you’re learning on the fly. Since you assume people are feigning interest in you, you pick up tics and quick-witted dodges to make yourself more endearing or to better hide your deficiencies. And in the end, you go to your room exhausted, not really sure if you had a good time, not really sure why you were there in the first place, but content nonetheless.”

ParentsCocktailsLearning Language
Book:Monsieur Mediocre: One American Learns the High Art of Being Everyday French
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“And soon a cold realization hit me: The time for giving up hope and 
letting go was now. It would be my parting gift to her. And as I cried 
into Mom’s ear and held her hand, and told her it was okay to let go, that I’d be fine, I felt her chest rise one last time. There was no long 
continuous beep like you see in the movies. Just a deafening silence 
and my echo of good-bye skipping down the side of her ear like a coin 
down a deep well.”

DeathParentsMourningSaying Goodbye
Book:Monsieur Mediocre: One American Learns the High Art of Being Everyday French
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“Eu teimava com meus pais, adorava ganhar uma discussão deles, me vangloriava de ser moderno, transgressor e rebelde, plantava sempre assuntos polêmicos como pena de morte e aborto nas rodas de almoço e jantar, táticas para denunciar o conservadorismo dos dois. Batia a porta, fechava a cara, gritava como um sindicalista lutando por melhores condições dentro de casa. E eles pediam que eu tivesse calma, que não faltasse com a educação, que não levantasse da mesa sem terminar a refeição, pois não adiantava reclamar da injustiça do mundo se não limpava o meu prato.”

LoveFamilyParents
Book:Cuide dos pais antes que seja tarde
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“Fundamos a cumplicidade com os pais por um equívoco: a necessidade. Não deveríamos procurá-los só quando precisamos. É transformar o amor em interesse, é converter a ternura em assistencialismo. São os nossos infinitos provedores financeiros e emocionais, nosso SOS, nossa ligação direta com o céu. Jamais invertemos a perspectiva e trocamos de lugar: o que eles desejam?”

LoveFamilyParents
Book:Cuide dos pais antes que seja tarde
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“If you're still hungry, I have some apples for dessert." She held one out that was a mix of reds and greens with a hint of gold. "These are Red Fire apples." Henri took a bite. "That's heaven. What did you call it? A Red Fire? I've never had anything like it." "They're only grown in our kingdom. My mother was the one who created the hybrid," Snow said proudly. She used to beg her parents to tell her the story of their courtship over and over. She could picture her mother laughing. Snow, there must be something else you want to talk about! "It's what you get when you cross red apple seeds with some pears and green apple seeds," Snow told Henri now. "She came up with it at the apple orchard she helped tend when she was my age. My father loved them and had them planted all over the countryside." Snow picked up one and stared at it. "It was the Red Fire apple that endeared my mother to my father, actually. He adored her apples." Henri smirked. "So it was love at first bite?" She laughed. "I suppose so!”

Love StoryParentsApplesHybridSnow WhitePrince Henrich
Book:Mirror, Mirror
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“I began to understand that I could not depend on them to provide me with affirmation and approval. To improve my relationship with my parents, I needed to change. I needed to give myself permission and approval to do what I wanted to do. If my parents couldn’t love me the way I wanted them to love me, then I would have to learn how to love myself.”

Self LoveParentsSelf CompassionParents And Child
Book:Parent Yourself Again: Love Yourself the Way You Have Always Wanted to Be Loved
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“Enfant, on idéalise ses parents. On pense qu’ils sont parfaits car ils sont notre seul repère, le mètre avec lequel on mesure le monde et nous-mêmes. Adolescent, on ne les supporte plus, parce qu’on se rend soudain compte que non seulement ils ne sont pas parfaits, mais qu’ils sont peut-être encore plus à la ramasse que nous. Et puis, il y a cet instant où on prend conscience que ce ne sont ni des superhéros ni des méchants. Ce sont ni plus ni moins des humains. La question qui se pose alors, c’est de savoir si on peut leur pardonner de n’être, en fin de compte, rien de plus que des hommes. — Kelton”

Parents
Book:Dry
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“Fathers! You have no idea the impact that your example has on the person your child will become. Everything you say to them will be like a stud or brick in their construction. Would you build a house with crappy supplies? Do you think that you can skimp on costs and still expect a quality house? Do you think you can just toss it all together and hope it stands up? No! You have to have a plan, the right materials, and careful construction procedures to build a proper house. You can't ignore your kids, or parent without any thought. You can't consistently lose your temper and insult them and expect them.to grow up healthy and whole. I'm not a perfect parent, and you won't be either. But we HAVE to think about what effect our actions has on them.”

ParentingParentsFatherhoodMasculinityFathersDadsManlihood
Author:Josh Hatcher
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“Parents don't really know how to help. Some aren't prepared for this new version of their high-achieving kid: doubting, sad, tired, confused- emotions they may have rarely dealt with in high school. And isn't college supposed to be even better than high school? When your child is more mature, self-sufficient, and otherwise flourishing just as she always has been, except now at an even higher level?”

CollegeDepressionAnxietyHigh SchoolParentsPerfectionist
Book:What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen
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“Have you thought about the Coming Out Thing? It gets complicated when you bring religion into the equation. Technically, Jews and Episcopalians are supposed to be gay-friendly, but it's hard to really know how that applies to your own parents. Like, you read about these gay kids with really churchy Catholic parents, and the parents end up doing PFLAG and Pride Parades and everything. And then you hear about parents who are totally fine with homosexuality, but can't handle it when their own kid comes out. You just never know.”

ReligionGayParentsLgbtLgbtq
Book:Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
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“He was sitting on the edge of the bed last night in his pajamas she said. And I saw the back of his neck, this fragile slender stem of a neck and it struck me all at once that there was nobody anywhere any place on this planet who would look at that little neck and just have to reach out and cup a hand behind it. you know how you just have to touch your child sometimes? How you drink him in with your eyes and you could stare at him for hours and you marvel at how dear and impossible perfect he is? And that will never again happen to Douglas. He has nobody left on earth who thinks he's special [...] I need this. I have to do this! I cannot see that little stem of a neck and let him go on alone in this world. I can't! I'd rather die!”

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Book:A Spool of Blue Thread
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“Perhaps you've been through a seemingly endless string of difficult circumstances in life or you still feel anger toward your parents for painful childhood memories you have. Whatever the difficulties you've faced, you can overcome the lies attached to your private logic that continue to hold you back. So many people look everywhere but to themselves for the change that needs to happen in their lives, pointing at their missed opportunities and blaming their parents. You don't have to be one of them.”

GrowthRegretForgivenessAngerParentsBitternessChildhood MemoriesChildhood Pain
Book:What Your Childhood Memories Say about You . . . and What You Can Do about It
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