Family is the heart's anchor, providing us with love, support, and a sense of belonging. Our relationships with family members shape our lives in profound ways, offering both challenges and joys that define our personal narratives. In the pursuit of understanding and celebrating these unique bonds, words often serve as a powerful tool. This collection of 61 quotes on family relationships invites you to reflect on the essence of family, offering insights and inspiration drawn from diverse perspectives. Whether you’re looking to capture the warmth of togetherness or navigate the complexities of familial ties, these quotes may provide the wisdom and comfort you seek. Join us as we explore the remarkable depth and beauty that family relationships bring into our lives.
1. “I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.” - Maya Angelou
2. “Sundays too my father got up earlyand put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that achedfrom labor in the weekday weather madebanked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the coldand polished my good shoes as well.What did I know, what did I knowof love's austere and lonely offices?” - Robert Hayden
3. “The more you love,the more love you have to give.It's the only feeling we have which is infinite...” - Christina Westover
4. “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.” - Joan Bauer
5. “It could not have been easy for Mother, an only child, to grow up without a father and with a mother who was remote. Photos of her as a child show her extremely dressed up --Cornie's beautiful little doll. But a daughter, unlike a doll, grows up, and might fall in love with and marry someone her mother does not like; she becomes an individual with her own ideas.” - Cornelia Maude Spelman
6. “...Families are Forever, and wondered if the slogan was meant as a promise or a threat.” - Brady Udall
7. “You mustn't stand about. Come home with me to dinner.’‘No.’ More shakes his head. ‘I would rather be blown around on the river and go home hungry. If I could trust you only to put food in my mouth – but you will put words into it.” - Hilary Mantel
8. “But marrying within one's own family can get monotonous. One has heard all the same family stories, knows all the jokes and all the same recipes. No novelty.” - Margaret George
9. “If she were alive today, she would be ashamed of me. I'm trying to change that.” - Eric Wilson
10. “My mother says we’re supposed to make mistakes. That’s the way we learn.” Rocky Ryan in Bully At Ambush Corner.” - Karen Mueller Coombs
11. “I’m proud of you, son,” he said. “I guess it has finally sunk in that it’s important to stand up for yourself in this world.”Rocky shook his head. “It’s more important to stand up for someone who can’t stand up for herself,” he had answered.Rocky Ryan speaking with his father.” - Karen Mueller Coombs
12. “Often the right path is the one that may be hardest for you to follow. But the hard path is also the one that will make you grow as a human being.” - Karen Mueller Coombs
13. “Which meant it was time for the centerpiece of the celebration, the reason they were all gathered on Saturday, the weekly episode of what, as far as many of the Davidsons including Jody were concerned was the greatest television show ever made. Hee Haw. While Roy and Buck sang the opening song, everyone would bicker and talk back and forth, what was better about the show, the music or the humor, what have you, the natural result of 40 people crowded around one rabbit eared television set. But once Hee Haw started, the talking was over. After that, it was all about the love. And so was everything before, really.” - Brian Holers
14. “In my family strange is relative.” - Kate Rockland
15. “Bad luck doesn't have any chinks in it," he said with deep bitterness. "I was born a son of a bitch and I'm going to die a son of a bitch.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
16. “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.” - Charlotte Brontë
17. “...I’m sorry you grew up without me and that fatherly moments came second hand like clothing and toys from your brothers...” - S. Clifford
18. “We sat like that for a long while, and when we stood up, all my sad things were in boxes, and Beck was my father.” - Maggie Stiefvater
19. “Doubt is a lot like faith; A mustard's seed worth changes everything.” - Donna Johnson
20. “Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. Now that you're an adult, take refuge in the fact that some things are beyond your control. You owe it to yourself to steer clear of people who are harmful to your health.” - Andrea Lavinthal
21. “When I was about nine, my siblings and I fell out of our moving van at an intersection. My dad didn’t notice for about five blocks. It was back before seat belts. It was also back before parents used any sort of common sense whatsoever. It was a time when you didn’t raise your children. You just fed them and they got bigger.” - Dina Kucera
22. “There are millions of people out there who live this way, and their hearts are breaking just like mine. It’s okay to say, “My kid is a drug addict or alcoholic, and I still love them and I’m still proud of them.” Hold your head up and have a cappuccino. Take a trip. Hang your Christmas lights and hide colored eggs. Cry, laugh, then take a nap. And when we all get to the end of the road, I’m going to write a story that’s so happy it’s going to make your liver explode. It’s going to be a great day.” - Dina Kucera
23. “He trailed his eyes down over her beautiful breasts then told her, “You’re going to keep your mouth shut and I’m going togive you that Orgasm you asked for.” He thought for a moment she was going to tell him to get lost, but instead she leaned her head back against the wall and pushed her hips out toward him.” - Ella Frank
24. “He paused leaning over to lay his lips on hers, “It’s time to feel again. Let me save you from yourself. You were drowning when I found you, but I’m not letting you go, not without a fight.” He kissed her sweetly and moved back standing up and over her. Lena looked up at his out stretched hand.“Take my hand Lena.” He offered and she knew he meant it in a way that went far beyond offering to help her stand.” - Ella Frank
25. “I believe in fate and I believe you were supposed to walk into my life, so Mason could walk into yours.” - Ella Frank
26. “Rejection is an opportunity for your selection.” - Bernard Branson
27. “Life was good. Everything was going right. It was almost scaring him because usually when things were going this well it was the calm before the storm hit.” - Michelle Sutton
28. “إن قاعدة اللقاء في ظاهرة الزوجية الكونية هي التخالف، وليست التوافق، فاللقاء الخصب المنجب يجب أن يتم بين متخالفين ومتباينين، ومن ثم فإن العلاقة بين الرجل والمرأة تقوم على التخالف، على المستويات العضوية والعقلية والنفسية، وهذا التخالف هو الشرط الأساس لوجود ظاهرة (التكامل) والتعاون، حيث يظهر لكل واحد من الزوجين أن كمال البنية المشتركة بينهما - وهو الأسرة - لا يأتي من أي منهما على انفراد، وإنما من خلال اللقاء الإيجابي بينهما، وتكميل أحدهما للآخر.” - عبد الكريم بكار
29. “I’d put more distance between us. Having us here, always together hasn’t allowed for any fondness to grow between us.” - Courtney Miller Santo
30. “Anyway, it was Oscar who called me to remind me that our nephew, Lydia's son Garnett, was turning eleven years old. Fuck my life. I hated that kid. He smelled like asparagus, and he sweated way too much for a healthy child; but then Garnett, given his propensity for biting teachers and catching chipmunks in the backyard only to bury them alive, was no normal kid. He was a case study for sociopathic behavior in the making. A walking, talking, farting, sweaty, odorous, chipmunk-burying cry for help.” - Richard J. O'Brien
31. “My brother trolled recovery and support groups, searching for women with dependency issues, the way I frequented bookstores with the hope of finding a well-adjusted, intelligent woman. Between us, his record was more stellar, his sin more reprehensible; though, knowing my brother, he slept soundly through the night without ever experiencing the slightest remorse.” - Richard J. O'Brien
32. “However hard and however long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels...” - Rosamund Lupton
33. “Life is filled with rhythms-day and night, hot and cold, summer and winter, spring and fall, cloudy and clear. Likewise in a relationship, men and women have their own rhythms and cycles.” - john gray
34. “It was a sickening, humbling, maddeningly powerless sensation this watching them and waiting for them to come to him. For the time they could be a family again. But Mickey did it like one’s tongue pointlessly finds a mouth sore over and over again, half to see if it was still there, half to see if it still hurt.” - Genevieve Dewey
35. “Sometimes family is just not what you were born into.” - Chelesbells
36. “Hades," Kronos growled. "I hope you and the ladies have come to pledge your allegiance." "I'm afraid not." Hades sighed. "My son here convinced me that perhaps I should prioritize my list of enemies." He glanced at me with distaste. "As much as I dislike certainupstart demigods, it would not do for Olympus to fall. I would miss bickering with my siblings. And if there is one thing we agree on—it is that you were a TERRIBLE father.” - Rick Riordan
37. “This is how it essentially is for Bunny Junior. He loves his dad. He thinks there is no dad better, cleverer, or more capable, and he stands there beside him with a sense of pride — he's my dad — and he also, of course, stands beside him because he has nowhere else to go.” - Nick Cave
38. “What about Danny Thomas?" Uncle Hal asks. "What happened to him?"Dead," Uncle Abdelhafiz says. "Nice Lebanese boy.""Never mind about Danny Thomas, look what happened to your whole family! Look at your cousin Farouq, Great Uncle Ziad, Auntie Seena and Jimmy's son Jalal," Aunt Jean cuts in disapprovingly."Dead, dead, dead, and in jail.” - Diana Abu-Jaber
39. “You'd think family would be the one sure thing in life, the gimme? Points you got just for being born? So much thick, meaty stuff bound you to these people, so many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.” - Ben Fountain
40. “If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.” - Ben Fountain
41. “It ain't locked, till it's checked!” - Angelo N. Dallas
42. “I could feel the hard part of Mom very strongly that time. It was like a stone in her that grew bigger every time my father lost his temper, right under her heart. Feeling the stone in her calmed me down. It told me that she would always be there for me.” - Kaimana Wolff
43. “How did so many women get to this unhappy place of not understanding how truly "simple" men are in their requirements and how much benevolent power their wives have over them? Why did notions like assuaging "male ego" and using "feminine wiles" rocket into disrepute? How is it that so many women are angry with men in general yet expect to have a happy life married to one of them?There are a number of reasons for this, and I believe they all revolve around the assault upon, and virtual collapse of, the values of religious morality, modesty, fidelity, chastity, respect for life, and a commitment to family and child-rearing.” - Laura Schlessinger
44. “Our life stories are largely constructed and without mindfulness can prove destructive.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru
45. “the harsh truth of every relationship, even between those who love each other, like fathers and sons and daughters, or husbands and wives, is that the love is always unequal.” - Karl Taro Greenfeld
46. “A family is like medicine." She twisted her lips into a sardonic smile. "Best in small doses.” - Alexandra Ivy
47. “My grandfather was crying. The kind of quiet that is quiet and a secret. The kind of crying that only I noticed. I thought about him going into my mom's room when she was little and hitting my mom and holding up her report card and saying that her bad grades would never happen again. And I think now that maybe he meant my older brother. Or my sister. Or me. That he would make sure that he was the one to work in a mill. I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't know if it's better to have your kids be happy and not go to college. I don't know if it's better to be close with your daughter or make sure she has a better life than you do. I just don't know.” - Stephen Chbosky
48. “If we're to be judged by our parents and grandparents, then we all may as well impale ourselves upon jagged bits of rock.” - Kristin Cashore
49. “In WASP families, if you don't get along with someone, you have as little to do with them as possible. In Jewish families, you move next door, to make them as miserable as possible.” - Doreen Orion
50. “If our family was an airline, Mom was the hub and we were the spokes. You rarely went anywhere nonstop; you went via Mom, who directed the traffic flow and determined the priorities: which family member was cleared for takeoff or landing. Even my father was not immune to Mom's scheduling, though he was given more leeway than the rest of us.” - Will Schwalbe
51. “Comparing marriage to football is no insult. I come from the South where football is sacred. I would never belittle marriage by saying it is like soccer, bowling, or playing bridge, never. Those images would never work, only football is passionate enough to be compared to marriage. In other sports, players walk onto the field, in football they run onto the field, in high school ripping through some paper, in college (for those who are fortunate enough) they touch the rock and run down the hill onto the field in the middle of the band. In other sports, fans cheer, in football they scream. In other sports, players ‘high five’, in football they chest, smash shoulder pads, and pat your rear. Football is a passionate sport, and marriage is about passion. In football, two teams send players onto the field to determine which athletes will win and which will lose, in marriage two families send their representatives forward to see which family will survive and which family will be lost into oblivion with their traditions, patterns, and values lost and forgotten. Preparing for this struggle for survival, the bride and groom are each set up. Each has been led to believe that their family’s patterns are all ‘normal,’ and anyone who differs is dense, naïve, or stupid because, no matter what the issue, the way their family has always done it is the ‘right’ way. For the premarital bride and groom in their twenties, as soon as they say, “I do,” these ‘right’ ways of doing things are about to collide like two three hundred and fifty pound linemen at the hiking of the ball. From “I do” forward, if not before, every decision, every action, every goal will be like the line of scrimmage. Where will the family patterns collide?In the kitchen. Here the new couple will be faced with the difficult decision of “Where do the cereal bowls go?” Likely, one family’s is high, and the others is low. Where will they go now? In the bathroom. The bathroom is a battleground unmatched in the potential conflicts. Will the toilet paper roll over the top or underneath? Will the acceptable residing position for the lid be up or down? And, of course, what about the toothpaste? Squeeze it from the middle or the end? But the skirmishes don’t stop in the rooms of the house, they are not only locational they are seasonal. The classic battles come home for the holidays. Thanksgiving. Which family will they spend the noon meal with and which family, if close enough, will have to wait until the nighttime meal, or just dessert if at all? Christmas. Whose home will they visit first, if at all? How much money will they spend on gifts for his family? for hers? Then comes for many couples an even bigger challenge – children of their own! At the wedding, many couples take two candles and light just one often extinguishing their candle as a sign of devotion. The image is Biblical. The Bible is quoted a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. What few prepare them for is the upcoming struggle, the conflict over the unanswered question: the two shall become one, but which one? Two families, two patterns, two ways of doing things, which family’s patterns will survive to play another day, in another generation, and which will be lost forever? Let the games begin.” - David W. Jones
52. “It may be that psychologists are off-base in their preoccupation with children’s need to feel that their father or some other parent loves them. It also seems valid to consider the child’s desire to feel that a parent actually likes them, as love itself is so automatic and preprogrammed in a parent that it isn’t a very good test of whatever it is that the typical child feels so anxious to pass the test of” - David Foster Wallace
53. “You are the posterity of your family. You are either continuing the progression or regression of your ancestors.” - Johnnie Dent Jr.
54. “The debt we owe our parents can never be squared, and jolly good too, because doing so would threaten to nullify all relationship, all emotional commerce between the two generations. Being in debt, just like being in credit, means an active interest applies between the two parties and, once the debt is taken care of, the interest is bound to wane.” - Robert Rowland Smith
55. “Families can also be divided into subgroups with different values, perspectives, and and communication styles, even if a subgroup consists of only one individual.” - David Bedrick
56. “When a woman once asked Joe how he could come from such a magnificent home and such a good family and still become a gangster, Joe's answer was two-pronged: (a) he wasn't a gangster, he was an outlaw; (b) he came from a magnificent house not a magnificent home.” - Dennis Lehane
57. “Every moment of our lives we make choices. Most we don’t even know we’re making, they’re so dull or routine or automatic. Some are beyond explanation—like my mom choosing Wyatt’s memory over Dad and me.” - Laura Anderson Kurk
58. “Sometimes, in the stillness of my room, my mom’s voice came to me, repeating things she’d said for months. Like, “My skin is melting off my face, isn’t it?” And, “My whole body feels dead from the crap they’re pouring into me. Do I look green to you?” And, “When I’m naked, I can see my heart beating.” - Laura Anderson Kurk
59. “Here’s what I learned about life when we were going through that. We’re all human and mortal. We’re all going to suffer and die. But it’s how we are with each other during those times that proves God’s here with us.” He turned his hand over in mine and entwined our fingers. “He comes in through people. People who love us anyway. They jump right into the chaos with us and try to help us make sense of it. That’s what mercy is…it’s choosing to help, or forgive, or love even when it goes against all logic.” - Laura Anderson Kurk
60. “As a young man I started searching for my own identity by looking into family, friends and insideMyself. My mother always taught us to live free even when confined, meaning “never let anyone break you down physically or mentally.” Since my living environment was so heavily impacted with violence and illegal activity I found myself adapting to social norms that later in my adult life would negatively affect me. For example, certain physical reactions that were acceptable, as a child would give you a reputation on the street as tough guy, don’t mess with him. The same mentality later in life, as a man would label you as a predator of some sort and a woman abuser. It was hard to understand the true value of a man and all his worth and everything he is capable of achieving, when you’re surrounded by pimps, hustlers and con men that all may make more money than the men with trade jobs and have more of an appealing lifestyle for the short- term progress.” - Rubin Scott
61. “When you love someone, show them in words AND deeds. To hear you're loved is nice but to feel loved is incredible.” - Nina Guilbeau
