E. L. Doctorow Quotes

People are pretty forgiving when it comes to other people's families. The only family that ever horrifies you is your own.

If I dyed my hair, my mother would actually disown me.

Women tend to be preservers of the social structure, of marriage. They don't want to upset their husbands or their significant others. They don't want to hurt people.

Many people don't have relationships to their siblings in adulthood, or they have superficial ones. It's sort of unfashionable, particularly in America, to be close to your family.

There are dozens of great American writers who write about the family.

Why, on my mother's birthday, am I thinking about 'Father Knows Best?' At our house, mother knew best at least as often as father did, but then the title of the old sitcom, a homogenized portrait of American family life, was meant to be slightly sardonic.

When you deal with your brother, be pleasant, but get a witness.

I guess in America we're so sold on this ideal of the perfect, well-adjusted family that is able to confront any conflict and, with true love and understanding, work things through. I'm sure they do exist, but I never knew any of them.

I dug the idea that I was being perceived as the black sheep of my family, but for me, it was like, I was a rebel, and that to me was most important.

I think mothers get a raw deal in American culture, so I've been defending them. I have three daughters, and I know that as they become mothers, they got a lot more gentle towards me!

I've been to all 50 states, and traveled this whole country, and 90 percent of the people are good folks. The rest of them take after the other side of the family.

Family dynamics are true over time, across generations and different cultures.

My mother helped me identify myself the way the world would identify me. Bloodlines didn't matter as much as how I would be perceived.

How do you rebel in a family of rebels?

No woman in Afghanistan is in business without support from either her husband or her father or her uncle, someone.

If you're fascinated by America, you'll be fascinated by family.

This is your father and this your mother, so take the hand of whom you like

I know that you do not make the laws, but I also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do.

The innkeeper loves the drunkard, but not for a son-in-law.

I think about the Arabs not as enemies but as cousins. Even when we are in a fierce conflict with them, they are more of a kind of family - with all the problems of a family. We have to live with them.

We're just like a regular family.

As far as my involvement in the Bajaj family affairs is concerned, it is a friendly gesture.

I didn't want to play the wife of some guy my dad's age.

Patrick Wilson is my brother-in-law - we married sisters.

My family all thought I was a little nuts.