Denise Mina Quotes

I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.

When my husband came to my parents' house for the first time, he asked, 'Why is everyone screaming? Why are they so angry?' I said, 'No one's angry. This is just how we communicate.'

I have a big family full of massive personalities so i just sit there most of the time great fun to listen to their stories.

This is not to say that the Scots are not fine people, but they were all sort of... well, my grandfather was a minister and sort of Protestant, and this was rather depressing to me.

My family is certainly very vocal. They're very Italian. A lot of our holidays end with people screaming at each other across the room. And everyone's very opinionated and intelligent. A lot of my aunts and uncles are wildly educated, and their opinions reflect that. We're all very liberal.

The parents' job is to be there for their kids, not the other way round. Troubles between parents need to be talked through with friends and not visited on the children.

One of the first major storylines that 'All My Children' featured was Erica Kane, a rebellious daughter, and her mother, sort of a matriarchal type, who was trying to guide her daughter to a safer place.

It's great if the in-laws themselves put up boundaries. But if they won't; it's up to their grown kids to do it and enforce them.

Everyone has hiccups in their families.

I'm considered homophobic and crazy about these things and old fashioned. But I think that the family - father, mother, children - is fundamental to our civilisation.

I wouldn't say my mother was my best friend, because that sounds odd, but we have a really tight bond and she is my friend on Facebook. Although she only goes on it to check up on me and sometimes we argue about it.

I like stories that affect families.

With family dramas, it's hard to keep those stories alive.

On the morning of Thanksgiving, I would wake up to the home smelling of all good things, wafting upstairs to my room. I would set the table with the fancy silverware and china and hope that my parents and grandmother wouldn't have the annual Thanksgiving fight about Richard Nixon.

When I met my husband, I refused to invite him home for Passover because I was embarrassed my mother might serve all the catered dishes in the wrong order.

In Asia, it's customary to get together with your entire extended family on a regular basis, and it's all rife with politics.

Growing up in an Italian family, you use a harsh tone and 10 minutes later everybody forgets about it.

When a mother quarrels with a daughter, she has a double dose of unhappiness hers from the conflict, and empathy with her daughter's from the conflict with her. Throughout her life a mother retains this special need to maintain a good relationship with her daughter.

My father and mother - I figured if I could make them laugh, they'd stop fighting. I stole all their material.

Dinner 'conversation' at the Cohens' meant my sister, mom, and I relaying in brutal detail the day's events in a state of amplified hysteria, while my father listened to his own smooth jazz station in his head.

I wish I had a great relationship with my mother.

I'm from a big family. I've got 10 nieces and nephews.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

If the family is the basis of the society, and the basis of the family is the division of labor between husband and wife, and the upbringing of children is the most important function of the family, then such a society is indeed civilized ...

The growing diversity of family life comes with new possibilities as well as new challenges.