Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes

I think that it would be hard to find a family that didn't have a secret in it somewhere, and sometimes we know about them, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we have an inkling that there's something hidden, but I think that it touches everybody's life.

I think family skeletons are best left where they are-- in the closet

Families just have so many secrets and dysfunctions.

I've always been interested in family secrets and what happens behind closed doors. I find that fascinating and creepy - that's why I read: because I want to know other people's secrets.

I do seem to have a lot of family secrets in my novels. I guess I'm one of those writers who is often writing about the same sort of themes, but taking different angles on them.

The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it.

I don't think it's healthy to have secrets; they hang over a family for generations.

It's impossible to know what everyone does behind closed doors. Even in families, you don't know sometimes what's going on.

I think it's always interesting to me how we keep secrets from the ones we love the most. You could be so close to someone, but still there was something you can't express, you can't tell them, because it's almost too painful and too hard for you to articulate yourself, because you don't fully understand it.

Secret families are really the bedrock issue of Western literature.

Many of us live in dysfunctional families, and so even if it's in a fairy tale, or perhaps because it's in a fairy tale, we have a chance to look at that side of our reflected lives differently.

My mother, whom I love dearly, has continually revised my life story within the context of a complicated family history that includes more than the usual share of divorce, step-children, dysfunction, and obfuscation. I've spent most of my adult life attempting to deconstruct that history and separate fact from fiction.

Families in which nothing is ever discussed usually have a lot not to discuss.

My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had.

It hurts real bad to have that protection barrier between parent and child.

Now that I think about it, maybe my own literary exploration of the dark secrets held by families could be traced back to V.C. Andrews.

I found out when I was 18 that Dad had left my mother and the family before he realised he was ill and then died. When I asked Mum about it, she just sort of shrugged it off and said she'd thought I knew about it all along. Of course I hadn't, though I'm sure she must have been desperately unhappy at the time.

Every family has that secret. Every family has that thing where you go, 'Shhh, shhh, shhh.'

I am intrigued by the way secrets move through a family and how events and perceptions from decades earlier continue to influence the way relatives view each other. Homes shape family histories as well.

There are secrets in families. That is the definition of a family.

There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so, but behind locked doors, there are usually high emotions running.

My parents would, like, argue in front of us and it wasn't a big deal, whereas I know some people's parents who, if they argued, it was like, 'Oh, my God.'

I can understand a family that's imploding. I have experience of that in my own life.

One of the things I have noticed about my novels is that they all concern people who can't quite bring themselves to tell the truth about their own lives... I've come to realise that this interest in damaged, untellable stories comes from my parents.

Mary Trump's 'Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man' tells a remarkable story, the broad strokes of which many already knew. Mary Trump offers a tale of what she calls 'malignant' family dysfunction, and how it produced a malignantly dysfunctional president.